We have realised that titles are important in connoting the genre of a movie and anchoring the preferred reading. We've found movies without many titles like Four Lions but we don't want to head down that route. Although our movie idea doesn't directly comply with the auteur theory as it won't tackle a social issue, we still want to have the director's name come up twice in the titles, like an auteur does. After looking at many examples, we came up with an order of titles for our opening. We want the order to go as follows:
- A Scope Productions Film
- A Spikey Films Production
- In associations with TriHard Productions and Bright Films
- Luxembourg Film Fund
- Directed by James David
- Produced by Nira Park (SOTD)
- Starring Tristan Plumridge
- James Whiting
- Emma Scoble
- Introducing Nickolas Wilson
- And with Louis Hodges and Neil Scoble
- Director of Photography: Michael Bonvillain (ZL)
- Costume Designer Esmee Young (28 DL)
- Music Score composed by Hannah Ni
- VFX by Tom Szenher (Warm Bodies)
- Hair and Makeup Silvana Gamero
- Screenplay by Burr Steers (PandPandZ)
- Edited by Chris Dickens (SOTD)
- Directed by James David
Some of the people named in this list are from specific zom-rom-com hybrid genre movies. Nira Park produced Shaun of the Dead, Michael Bonvillain was the director of photography for Zombieland, Esmee Young was the costume designer for 28 Days Later, Claude François composed the music score for Shaun of the Dead,Tom Szenher did the VFX for Warm Bodies, Burr Steers did the screenplay for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Chris Dickens edited Shaun of the Dead.
We've also decided to include Luxembourg Film Fest. We got this inspiration from movies such as Tyrannosaur (Considine, 2011) as they have Film4 and UK Film Council, now known as BFI, British Film Institute who helped fund the movie. This is very common for indie movies as the BFI funds movies which show different representations. Indie movies also struggle to gain funding and distribution which is were the BFI or Luxembourg Film Fest come in handy.
As font goes, we want to inspiration from Anna and the Apocalypse to have a distressed bubble font. We also will take inspiration from Shaun of the Dead to have the main title move, like this. We will avoid having an animated title sequence like Anna and the apocalypse and avoid a title sequence without the movie underneath like Shaun of the dead and Zombieland. Our main titles will be in upper case, whereas the other ones will be sentence case. The words like "in association with" will be smaller than the company title. The positioning will vary on what is going on in the scene but the main titles will be much bigger and in the centre.
IDENTS
Occasionally, in the horror genre, they tweak the idents to make them anchor the genre. We found this in Friday the 13th. We won't be doing the same thing. We saw considerable variation in length and number, like Bridget Jones's Diary with 4 idents, lasting 1m, compared to Tyrannosaur with no idents, but we have discussed that we will have 2 idents, both with an audio bridge over them. This is because we have researched that Indie movies are more focused on the art of the movie rather than the production companies, like the Big 5.
SOUND
As I've just mentioned, we will have an audio bridge from the idents to the opening like Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee, The Boat that Rocked or Hot Fuzz. In This is England, they have pre-existing music playing which we want to have in our opening. Baby driver also has pre-existing music and a soundtrack which we want to take inspiration from. In Shaun of the Dead, the song Ghost Town is played in the background of the first scene so we want to use this song to intertextualise the film Shaun of the Dead. Another example of a big chunk of music playing over an opening scene is Zombieland. Like in Hot Fuzz, we will have some exaggerated sounds to connote the comedic genre within the zom-rom-com hybrid genre. We've also discovered that successful ambient sound will create verisimilitude so we want to achieve this too. We want to include both diegetic and non-diegetic sound.
1ST SHOT
We have seen in pretty much all movies we have researched that leaving some narrative enigma whilst still giving exposition is important. This can be constructed by not showing the protagonist immediately, like in About a Boy, whilst still giving exposition through the mise-en-scene. A contrasting way of constructing narrative enigma is when the central protagonist is shown immediately but still holding back information. Shaun of the Dead is a great example of this. The central protagonist is shown immediately, making it seem like he is the only one in the scene but then more characters are revealed as time goes on. The exposition is provided through the mise-en-scene and the dialogue between the characters. We want to take the About a Boy approach to our 1st shot with narrative enigma through not seeing the protagonist straight away.
CENTRAL PROTAGONIST AND NARRATIVE
Our central protagonist will take a lot of inspiration from Shaun and Ed from Shaun of the Dead. We will use costume and mise-en-scene to try create this slob stereotype. We will also use many techniques we have seen, such as rule of thirds, tracking shots and others to anchor who the central protagonist is to the audience. We want to have a Proppian hero archetype and a princess/prize archetype, which we've seen in Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. The Proppian villian archetype will be the zombies. We also want to have some binary oppositions, possibly through the central protagonist and his best friend. We want our protagonist to follow Campbell's hero's journey but as we are only creating a film opening, the only stages we will show will be the shift from equilibrium to the call to adventure. This is the same for Todorov's narrative structure, where we will only show the equilibrium to disequilibrium in the film opening.
MISE-EN-SCENE
Like Shaun of the Dead, we want the mise-en-scene to show that our protagonist is a bit of a slob. We like the scene in the living room with the rubbish and junk on the coffee table and will take inspiration from that. We want the mise-en-scene to give as much exposition about our character as possible so we will take influence from About A Boy and how the mise-en-scene shows the audience what type of person the character is without even seeing him. We also want to film on a day where the weather is slightly cloudy so there is pathetic fallacy.
TRANSITIONING TO MAIN FILM
Like Zombieland and This is England, as well as many others, we want to have our main title to be shown, and then have it fade to black which will them transition into the main movie. We don't want to have a title sequence like these movies though.
SOUND
As I've just mentioned, we will have an audio bridge from the idents to the opening like Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee, The Boat that Rocked or Hot Fuzz. In This is England, they have pre-existing music playing which we want to have in our opening. Baby driver also has pre-existing music and a soundtrack which we want to take inspiration from. In Shaun of the Dead, the song Ghost Town is played in the background of the first scene so we want to use this song to intertextualise the film Shaun of the Dead. Another example of a big chunk of music playing over an opening scene is Zombieland. Like in Hot Fuzz, we will have some exaggerated sounds to connote the comedic genre within the zom-rom-com hybrid genre. We've also discovered that successful ambient sound will create verisimilitude so we want to achieve this too. We want to include both diegetic and non-diegetic sound.
1ST SHOT
We have seen in pretty much all movies we have researched that leaving some narrative enigma whilst still giving exposition is important. This can be constructed by not showing the protagonist immediately, like in About a Boy, whilst still giving exposition through the mise-en-scene. A contrasting way of constructing narrative enigma is when the central protagonist is shown immediately but still holding back information. Shaun of the Dead is a great example of this. The central protagonist is shown immediately, making it seem like he is the only one in the scene but then more characters are revealed as time goes on. The exposition is provided through the mise-en-scene and the dialogue between the characters. We want to take the About a Boy approach to our 1st shot with narrative enigma through not seeing the protagonist straight away.
CENTRAL PROTAGONIST AND NARRATIVE
Our central protagonist will take a lot of inspiration from Shaun and Ed from Shaun of the Dead. We will use costume and mise-en-scene to try create this slob stereotype. We will also use many techniques we have seen, such as rule of thirds, tracking shots and others to anchor who the central protagonist is to the audience. We want to have a Proppian hero archetype and a princess/prize archetype, which we've seen in Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. The Proppian villian archetype will be the zombies. We also want to have some binary oppositions, possibly through the central protagonist and his best friend. We want our protagonist to follow Campbell's hero's journey but as we are only creating a film opening, the only stages we will show will be the shift from equilibrium to the call to adventure. This is the same for Todorov's narrative structure, where we will only show the equilibrium to disequilibrium in the film opening.
MISE-EN-SCENE
Like Shaun of the Dead, we want the mise-en-scene to show that our protagonist is a bit of a slob. We like the scene in the living room with the rubbish and junk on the coffee table and will take inspiration from that. We want the mise-en-scene to give as much exposition about our character as possible so we will take influence from About A Boy and how the mise-en-scene shows the audience what type of person the character is without even seeing him. We also want to film on a day where the weather is slightly cloudy so there is pathetic fallacy.
TRANSITIONING TO MAIN FILM
Like Zombieland and This is England, as well as many others, we want to have our main title to be shown, and then have it fade to black which will them transition into the main movie. We don't want to have a title sequence like these movies though.
