Location

The location of the opening sequence is in London. It was a group decision to use the city because there are several landmarks, which seems more relevant for the storyline. An alien invasion wouldn’t take place in a little town like Wickford. Also, we thought that it would be better because people would know the area's that they see in the film.

We needed big area's so that we could run and not cause trouble.

London found to be the most suitable with the underground trains, landmarks and space.

We used locations in London such as:

Camden;

Nelsons Column;

Genre, Storyline, Title.

We have decided that the initial genre would be Sci-Fi and Action for our opening sequence of the film that we will be creating. The two minute long opening to ‘Crossing The Threshold’ will contain a dream sequence of the main character's dream.

The idea behind our opening scene, is that there is an alien invasion. However only the people who believe in the invasion, can see. The Girls are running from the places which they believe are being invaded, but the public cannot see it and are acting normal and oblivious to the invasion. It also shows the main character whom we later see in the ending of the opening sequence showing that it was actually a dream, dreamt by her.

If we were to produce the rest of the film, it would be based on the woman who has the dream at the beginning opening sequence.
She is the main character who has dreams that take place in the future.
This is how we come up with the title ‘ Crossing The Threshold’. The two other girls who we see in the opening sequence would become her companions helping save the world from the invasion, as the audience watches the main character hunt down the girls to help her save the world as them girls where destined to help her from the dream we witness in the opening sequence.

Similar films are ‘White Noise’, ‘Seven’ and ‘The Ring’.We have studied the opening sequences to these films and have used similar conventions.

The Logo

When I planned to make the logo for our institution, I had to think about the copyright infringement and also the relation from the image to the title of our company.

I decided to have an image of a monkey on the logo, as this would make sense because of our name being ‘Monkey Chops’.

I looked on Internet Explorer on Google Images to find a suitable image of a monkey, and I came across a photo that I liked:

http://www.wikihow.com/images/thumb/4/4b/MNKY07.JPG/300px-MNKY07.JPG

Due to copyright I thought it would be best to edit the image to make it my own; original.
I used Microsoft Paint for the transformation.

• Before
  

• After
  

To make the image different from the original Internet image, I made it look more feminine. Adding eyelashes and pink flushed cheeks with bunches as hair made the transformation. However, the image still didn’t suit the type of genre our production group was creating.
I decided to relate it to the current film production which comes into the sci-fi paranormal genre, Therefore I came to the conclusion to instead of changing the image, I would change the effect of the image.

I inverted the image and chose a font that I thought suitable for the production and came to a satisfactory completion of this:

Costume Mood Board

After deciding on what theme to put the actresses in, I did a mood board by cutting "casual" clothing out from various magazines and sticking them on a piece of paper to help determine what costumes would look best for the characters. We as a group initially decided upon having a casual clothing theme. The use of having casual clothing for the sci fi genre we had decided to place our film genre as, and with all the effects and themes running through our opening sequence by using a normal person, dressed casually in a well known famous London locations would keep our opening sequence believable.

We also had to use a different dress code for the other main character, by wearing heels and a dress we separated the working class from the upper class characters. On the mood board that i created we see the variance of the casual clothes i found with the upper class dress and heels.

This is a zoom in on the mood board's title, we know that it is for our production "Monkey Chops".

Research of Opening titles

For my main task I have focused on the genre paranormal, Sci-fi. I have researched opening sequences and titles to help me structure my own production, they are below.

• 28 Weeks later
  
• American Psycho
  
• Warlock
  
• Lord Of The Rings
  
• Golden Eye
  
• Casino Royale
  
• Quantum Of Solace
  
• Panic Room
  
• Catch Me If You Can
  
• Se7en
• Twilight
  
• White Noise
  
• The Ring

Luminaries of this Genre:

• George Lucas
  
• Gene Roddenberry
  
• Fritz Lang
  
• Steven Spielberg
  
• James Cameron
  
• Harrison Ford
  
• Ridley Scott
  
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
  
• Paul Verhoeven
  
• Will Smith
  

Analysis of the opening titles:




Panic Room:



The opening titles of this film have very similar conventions to the genre I am using for the production of my film. During the first 2 minutes of the opening titles there is a distinct contrast between the two types of music being played in the background. At first the music is slow and instrumental. Dietetic sounds are heard for example, car horns and sirens. This is done to highlight the fact its set in the city. Then suddenly the music changes it becomes deeper, more shallow and the tempo increases, also the instrumental phases become more staccato which automatically draws in the audience and increases tension. Below is a link to the panic room opening sequence video.

Spiderman Opening Sequence

Creating the DVD front cover

I researched quite alot of DVD covers so i could get an idea of the contents that are included with the genre Sci-fi/supernatural.

When creating this front cover; I thought about the directors, actors and actresses, the front cover image, institution logos and the title of the film.

Danielle and I come up with the title of our film "Crossing The Threshold" due to content of the film. I come up with the idea of having video footage of a train arriving at a station because it leaves mystery to the audience as well as making them intrigued with the following events. The film that then follows, is repetition of Danielle and I running in various different locations. Many of which are set in London and Camden. We wanted to make sure the locations were interesting as well as well realistic to the type of invasion that is occurring in the film, so we chose; Trafalgar square, Camden high street and Nelsons Column.

Also when designing this front cover I had to consider the genre so i could co-ordinate the colour accordingly. I chose black as the background as it indicates a dark film. I then wrote the title in red to also indicate the genre of the film and the fact its going to be about death and mystery. I had to include the logos of the institutions we wish to use on our front cover. We have created our own logo to use, which is shown below:

I then had to insert an image to reflect the film and attrract attention, so i had to make it interesting. I thought to include the main actresess. I then had to edit the image to make sure it suited the genre. I edited it in the programme Adobe Premeire Pro 1.5.
Below is a draft of the front cover:

Spiderman Analysis

Once the film starts we instantly get the tension building action music. This lasts throughout the titles building up the tension of the film with the music. The music that is used which is to add tensions works effectively with the film, as we know that it is going to be a "nail biting" film, with cliff hangers and won't be one of them films that are easy to guess the ending too.
Before the titles start we have the institution of the film which is Sony Pictures and Marvel Comic Books. As there original creator of Spiderman. The institution of a film gives the audience the knowing and understanding of knowing who and what produced/funded the film.
The titles begin with smoke in the background and a white font used through out the opening titles. The titles then jump to a Spiderweb. The writing once placed onto the web has had an effect added to it which gives the effect that the writing is falling off the screen. From this beginning the titles are already linking with the theme of Spiderman what with the spider's and spider webs it is already establishing what the film will involve, and linking obvious figures to the film.
Then written on the middle of the spiderweb is "Spiderman" in large, bold, white glowing font. By the change of font that is used this is letting us the audience know the film now showing its significance
The names appear to be stuck on the web when they get on the web.
The background is moving constantly through each frame. A red like mist appear and grows bigger becoming more solid through the different frames. The red mist then reveals into a red arm. A faceless red and blue body is moving with the change of names knocking the "casting by" frame off the screen revealing his body. By linking a mist and then changing it to a human body which is a Spiderman arm its linking all the key elements from Spiderman that everyone has grown to know together, what with the red mist and then the famous Spiderman outfit.
Through the opening scene we have seen that the faceless red and blue man is a good guy as the music the director has used for him gives off a superhero vibe, Which if already watched we know Spiderman is. When the Green Goblin mask appears glowing a green smoke a dramatic change in music happen, giving us the audience an eairy weariness that the mask resembles something bad.

Titles

Monkey Chop Productions

Stacey Smith – Roxy Wickes

Rose Flynn – Danielle Hickman

Sarah Day – Amy Harding

Music – The Take Over

Directed by – Amy Harding

Produced by – Roxy Wickes, Danielle Hickman, Amy Harding

Film Editing – Roxy Wickes, Danielle Hickman

Customes for our production

The aim of our production was for it to be as if it where a real life situation but as the genre is sci fi we would add a supernatural twist. The costumes that we used where based on every day clothing that you see every day people wearing. As our production genre is sci fi we added the sci fi effect with the transition and special effects on our production, keeping the location and costumes completely normal. The two characters seen to be running are dressed in plain clothing symbolising that they are normal people running away from something, the next character who we see in heels and dressed smartly is seen to be the main character sticking out from the other characters and surrounding. We do not show the face of this main character as we wanted to create a tense cliff hanger to the beginning sequence of our production leaving people wondering who this mysterious character is and what she is going to happen. The costume used for the main character who’s face we do not see throughout the main part of the production, when you do see it you see that she is laying in bed and has just woken up. We used pyjamas as the costume as that is what is usually worn in bed and it would not have fitted in with what we are trying to achieve if the character had still been in normal clothes whilst being asleep.

Target Audience

The target audience we aim for our production to suit is from teenagers to adults.
We will be giving the film a 12+ Rating.
We have decided to do this as the on the edge of your seat cliffhangers we have used throughout our production especially the opening sequence we find that children will not understand it.
The 12+ audience are a good audience as we have found out through research that this age range
is the primary targer audience to watch our sci fi production we have created.
We also realised that our opening sequence will be easier for someone of the age 12+ to understand rather than anyone younger.

Music

As we were told we were not allowed to use copyright music we had to locate a band our self or create our own music. We found this really hard as the music we had planned from the beginning was a signed artist so we had to change the opening sequence to fit with another song.

We listened to many non copyright tracks and then,a band called The Takeover who are an unsigned band allowed us to use their music
and we decided upon two of the tracks chosen from the 6 songs that were on the album, and it was perfect.


This is their Myspace music page:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=384271167