Opening Titles



The purpose of a title sequence is that they are designed to tell you the names of the people and organisations involved, which will normally follow a set structure and order. They set the scene, estalish characters and genre and narrative through- visual style of titles, use of sounds and transitions of titles.
There are several conventions in an order to the opening of a film:

• Producer
• Highest Billing
• Director
• Title
• Actor
• Cast
• Crew
• Final Name (Director)

Some films choose to intersperse titles with actions eg) Poseidon.

Others variate the normal rules of the conventions eg) Star Wars with an opening crawl.

Main Task


 In my main task for the media coursework I must create the titles and opening of a new Crime fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate, with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks will be completed as a group. There are 4 members in our group.


Conventions of the Crime Film
The main conventions of crime genre are:

• Film Noir - Sunset Boulevard
• American Gangster - Scarface, Godfather
• Detective - Poirot
• Spy - Casino Royale
• Police - Hot Fuzz
• Action - Lethal Weapon

Our chosen sub-genre is an Italian American Gangster Parody, based around the mob gangster stereotype. The usual things that we will hope to include to represent the american gangster area are the upper class type of people, guns, cigarettes, tuxedos/suits, hired help and low key lighting.

These images are example of what we might include in our film:


Low key lighting

Toy Guns

Cigar/cigarettes

Tuxedo/suits

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Exercise
The preliminary task was part of two elements to my media coursework. It was a continuity task testing the ability to apply three basic rules of film making:

• Match on Action
• Shot/Reverse Shot
• 180 Degree Rule

It was a group task and was needed to include and edit:

• A character opening a door, crossing a room
• Sitting down in a chair opposite another character
• The two characters exchange a couple of lines of dialogue

After filming we had to edit everything together into an order that made sense and cut any unnecessary film. This will not be graded, but marks will be deducted from the opening sequence task.
What I believe our group did well in the prelim task was that we managed to use our problem solving skills to work around the problems with the video, and used our resources well and acted effectively.

I have learnt from the prelim is that some cameras can be unreliable and problems can occur out of our control, we also learnt how to edit well, for example, transitions.

The targets for the main task and areas for improvement were to keep the continuity whilst filming, prepare a script before hand, and learn more about the camera functions.

Hello and welcome to my blog! :)
This is part of my AS Media work in Yale College Wrexham. This is my brief for the blog;
-My blog must consist of three main areas, within those areas certain elements must be uploaded.
-Whilst completing my main task, I will be recording my journey and progress throughout in the blog, almost like an online diary.
-I will be posting at least once a week commenting on what I have learnt/ achieved so far.