X GENERAL CONVENTIONS1 Titles, Idents, Production Context

IDENTS

WHAT ARE IDENTS?

Idents are essentially the logo of a production company which is played at the beginning of a movie.  They are the most simple aspect of a film opening.  An ident usually lasts between 4-7 seconds and there are usually 2-4 idents before the movie starts.  The more production companies involved in making the movie, the more the risks are spread.  Indie movies occasionally have no idents at the beginning.  The bigger conglomerates such as the Big 5 (Warner Bros., Paramount, NBC Universal, Sony and Walt Disney) get a lot more screen time for their idents rather than smaller junior companies.  The Big 5 are also more likely to have their own jingle rather than an audio bridge.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF AN IDENT?

They are placed at the beginning of a movie to show which production companies were involved in the making of the movie.  Idents are also used to advertise the production company.  Idents are often made aesthetically pleasing and enticing to make them memorable.  The fact that Big 5 idents are repeatedly marketed also helps to make them memorable.  The production company wants to make a good impression so that people are tempted to watch more of their creations.  Idents can also be altered to connote the genre of the movie.  This is mostly identifiable with the Slasher genre.

VODCAST
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POSSIBLE INFLUENCES

• Having possibly 1 or 2 idents with their own jingle
• Having 1 ident with audio bridge to movie
• Considering our film opening can't be that long, probably a maximum of 10 seconds per ident
• Possibly having something altered about the ident to connote the zom-rom-com hybrid genre

COMMON IDENTS

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TITLES

In this vodcast, I speak about the titles in different movies.  I've looked at some Working Title movies as well as Warp movies.  It is clear that a title is very important as it anchors the genre and the preferred reading.  This is shown through the font, colour, size and case.  It is interesting as a few movies don't have any titles at all.  The order is also important to look at as this will help us create our film opening.  I look at Tyrannosaur (Considine, 2011), This is England (Meadows, 2007) and Four Lions (Morris, 2010) from Warp and Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001) from Working Title.
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X THEORY3 Postmodernism Deconstructionism Intertextuality and Simulacra

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POSTMODERNISM

Argues that all the 'isms', eg. capitalism, communism, are now meaningless - the meta-narratives no longer have the power to explain the world or reality.  It is of course self-contradictory: postmodernism is an ism!
Strinati argues there is a collapse in the high/popular culture divide - all are now equally valid.
Such notions lead to playfulness.
The concept of postmodernism denies definition to some extent, but Dominic Strinati outlined 5 key characteristics in 1995 that are often cited:

1. Breakdown of the distinction between culture and society
2. An emphasis on style over substance
3. Breakdown of the distinction between high art and popular culture
4. Confusions over time and space
5. Decline of metanarratives ['grand theories such as Marxism, Christianity and ... modernism have lost their currency for modern societies']*

DECONSTUCTIONISM

The ironic use of existing conventions in a knowing way; the audience is assumed to be in on the irony.  EG: in Scream the Matthew Lillard character cries out dramatically "I'll be right back", an old horror trope being that this denotes a character will be killed.  The other teens at the party respond with that in mind, in a scene where they're sat watching Halloween.  Craven is poking fun at, or critiquing, the very genre he helped to create with 1972's The Last House on the Left.
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This occurs across all media - this Depeche Mode video is a classic example, deconstructing the band's poor, tawdry image and the male gaze.
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INTERTEXTUALITY

A simple but profound concept originating with Kristeva - the preferred reading (Stuart Hall) of two texts are linked; the viewer needs knowledge of the earlier text to be able to follow the preferred reading of the newer text.  TV shows like The Simpsons are built on this, and there is a strong vein of this running through the slasher genre.
To help generate cheap publicity for his 1978 proto-slasher Halloween, director John Capenter cast the daughter of the Psycho's scream queen.
In Scream, the characters are watching Halloween.

SIMULACRA

Scary Movie exemplifies the ideas above - it takes intertextuality to a new level: Scream had the working title of Scary Movie, and this film is a satirical remake, quite literally signposting the conventions (eg the Carmen Electra scream queen sees a sign giving the options for either death or safety... and runs up the stairs where the death sign points to, as the dumb scream queens tend to).
These movies have been much analysed, not least for gender representations.  Baudrillard might argue that this leads nowhere as there is no ultimate meaning behind an endless sea of signifiers; Scary Movie is an expression of many existing ideas or signifiers, which cannot be tracked back to any concrete 'true reality' or meaning.
Ideas like encourage playfulness, as seen in these two films.

X THEORY2 Laura Mulvey Male Gaze

The Male Gaze theory by Laura Mulvey focuses on the sexual objectification of women in media.  Click here to find out more.  

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Carroll Clover another feminist pointed out that this isn't always the case. In Slasher movies, there is a final girl.  The protagonist is almost always a teenage girl who isn't sexualised.

• argument against the male gaze
• agencing - having a sense of ownership/control 
• Clover agrees that males are more active and females are more passive however not in the horror genre due to the final girl having agency