Research into filming roles

                             The Director 

what is the role of a director?

the role of the director is to manage all creative aspects of the production of a film, the director manages and guides the cast and crew to create their vision of what the shot should look like. 

an example of a director is James Wan

James Wan is a Malaysian born Australian director. James wan focuses on daily horror and thriller films directing movies such as 'The conjuring' and 'Insidious'.  

The Camera operator

What is the role of the Camera operator?

the role of the camera operators role is to control and operate the camera, the are commonly known to work in tandem with sound and lighting director

an example of a Camera operator is Caleb Deschanel. 

Caleb Deschanel is an American cinematographer. Caleb Deschanel has been nominated for the academy

award of best cinematography six times. he is best known for his work on movie such as "The escape Artist" and "Black Stallion".

                              The Editor

The role of the Editor is to manage the camera footage, graphics, sound to create the final product of the movie. they are seen in the post production of the film. An example of an editor is Thelma Schoonmaker. Thelma Schoonmaker is an American film editor. she is commonly known for her work with director Martin Scoorse for over 50 years. she is also the winner of six Academy awards for best editing  

The Art Director/DOP

The role of the art director or DOP (director of Photography) is too determine the look and feel of the film. they work closely with the director.

an example of an art director/DOP is Rick Carter. Rick carter is an American art director known for
working on the film 'Forest Gump' which won him Numerous Oscars. He is also known for his work on movies such as 'The making of Jurassic Park' and 'The making of Avatar'. 

                                The Producer

The role of the Producer is to financially organize a film. they are in charge of the finances and distribution of a film. they also work with the director and DOP on the creative decision of the film of the film 

An example of a Producer in film is Kevin Feige. Kevin Feige is an American procuecer and the president
of Marvel since 2007 and is most known for his work on marvel films. 

Title sequences

What are titles?

- Titles give credit to all the creative names involved in the production and funding of the film. they are either incorporated at the beginning or the end of the movie, however the credits at the beginning of the movie are most commonly dedicated to.

what do they include? 

Money 

Production 

Directors name film 

Main star 

Film title 

Actor 1 – (end of main section) 

Actor 2 

Actor 3 

Actor 4 

Actor 5 

Casting 

Costume designer 

Music 

Edited 

Production designer 

Director of Photography (DOP) 

Executive Producer 

Produced by 

Based upon 

Screen play (writer) 

Director  

How to they set the scene

a title sequence can use many methods to establish the tone and genre of a movie. with the sound and imagery being the main focal points of the sequence, reflective fonts and soundtracks are often used to communicate the narrative. for example, in a more upbeat rom-com, bubble fonts and uptempo music may be used to establish a sense of joy or comfort in the audience. But for a horror of a thriller, they may use a more scattered looking font and eerie noises to establish a sense of discomfort in the audience. by changing the imagery and sound behind any title, you can completely change the communication of the tone. 

Font

Font is also a very important aspect of a title sequence. the use of font can further help the audience to figure out the genre of the film. for example if you were watching a Sci-Fi movie You may see fonts like this or like this as they reflect the futuristic/robotic tone of Sci-fi. or, if you were watching a period drama you may see fonts like this or like this as they reflect the time period that they are set in. If you were to be watching a children's film you will most commonly see fonts like this or like this  as they are easy for children to understand and read.

  

 

Comparing title sequences

 Grease tile sequence

Tone:

• the use of uptempo music creates a fun and enthusiastic atmosphere
•  the bubble font gives the impression that it is going to be a fun, youthful movie

Location:

• There is a lot of USA specific signs and items like American candy and broadway signs.
• At the end of the title sequence there is an high school

Time:

• there is iconic posters of movie stars and musicians from the 50's
• the drawing style is very vintage
• the music is from the 50s

• 

Genre:

• the sound track is very upbeat and feel good
• you can see a song names "grease" in the credits, this insinuates that there was a song specifically written for the movie.
• grease is a musical
• 

Narrative: Based on the clips, we can infer that it is about teenagers in high school 

• The use of animation also helps to establish the time, tone and genre. The font and the animation help to sell the fact that it is a light-hearted, comedic, 50’s, musical.

• Hint at romance, juxtaposition solo characters 

• Friendship group “Gangs” 

• Transition to high school, shows importance of main location

• Police chase suggests rebellion

• Leather jackets also suggest rebellion 

Main characters:

Danny-

- very laid back

- messy room, slobbish

- greaser hair

- vain

- cool guy attitude, hearth-throb

Sandy

- glamorous morning routine 

- fair 

- wakes up very princess like 

- snow white came out in the 50's, grease took inspiration from snow white for Sandy's character

the juxtaposition between Danny and sandy waking up insinuates that they make me love interests, based on previous movie stereotypes.

 

American horror story

Tone:

• eerie location
• very mysterious house

Location:

• set in a haunted house
• American horror story

Time:

• very vintage pictures which hence to an older time
• there is also modern medical instruments
• This could hint towards the time of it being a modern series, but it explores older themes
• 

Genre:

• very classic horror themes
• The soundtrack and the imagery are very eerie and create a deep sense of discomfort within the audience 
• 
  
  
  

Narrative:

• Very abstract, lots of imagery
• images aren't fully shown which hints to mystery
• The images and soundtrack also create a sense of discomfort
• The newer medical instruments and the older images and aged props insinuate that it could be set in a modern time but explores more vintage themes

Little women / Drama

 Studio: Columbia Pictures
Director: Greta Gerwig
Year: 2019
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Timothee Chalamet, Florence Pugh 

The scene opens with a shot of a woman taking a deep breath before she opens a door and walks into an office full of men. The woman then walks up to a mans desk and asks where the weekly volcano office and that she would like to see mr Dashwood. The woman then presents the man with papers and exclaims that a “friend” of hers would like to submit a tale that she wrote to the newspaper, she promotes her “friend” by telling the man all the other newspapers that she has sold too and the awards that she has won for her writing, the man then tells the woman to sit. The woman nervously plays with her hands as she sits down, the man begins to read the story as she sits and watches him intently waiting for a reaction, the man begins to chuckle as he is reading the story which makes her smile. However, the man then begins to take his quill and cross out pages of her writing wich causes her expression to drop. A montage of the man slamming each page of the story is shown and each time the womans expression drops as we can assume she is preparing herself for rejection, but to her surprise the man agrees and says that “they'll take it”, but that she needs to alter it as its too long. The woman thinks for a moment almost as if she is contemplating

standing up for herself, but then tells the man that she took care in “having a few of her sinners repent” in the story to which the man responds “our country has just been through a war, people want to be amused not preaches at. Morals don't sell nowadays”. She then asks what the compensation for the story to be to which the man says that they usually pay 25-30 dollars for that kind of stuff, but they'll pay her 20, she thinks for a moment before she agrees and says that they can take it. She then asks the man if he would like any more stories of her “friend” has any better ones, he says hell think about it but to keep them short and spicy, and that if the main character is a woman to either have her married or dead by the end. The man then asks what name her “friend” would like put to the story and the woman quickly says no name at all. She sakes his hand and tells him to have a good morning as she gets up and leaves. The tone of the narrative then completely shifts as we see her running through the streets surrounded completely by men, smiling. Little woman is a period drama set after one of the world wars, we know this because during the conversation that the man a woman were having he says “this country has just gone through a war”. Little women hilights the divide that was faced by women back in that time as the woman in the

opening was the only woman seen throughout, and she didn't get payed in full for the story she submitted. In the clip we are introduced to the woman who we can assume is a very confident person as she is putting herself regardless of the social norms. We are also introduced to a man who is the newspaper publisher, not much is revealed about the man except for the fact that he has views about how woman should end up in the story. Based on the opening scene i can assume that the rest of the movie will follow the womans writing journey and how she becomes a successful writer.

Inglorious Bastards / War

Studio: Visiona romantica 
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Year: 2009
Cast: Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux

The scene starts with title sequence displaying the text “one upon a time, in nazi-occupied france”. We start in the year 1941 with a shot of a man chopping wood next to a small house. A woman is then seen behind him hanging up washing on a washing line, as she is adjusting something to hang up she hears the rumbling of an engine and pears behind the cloth to see men approaching in vehicles which, when she sees the men she immediately turns around and alerts the man by saying “Papa” (which we can assume makes him her father). The man stops chopping wood as soon as he sees what she has seen, the mans other daughters come outside after hearing the sound of an engine and he tells them to go back inside quickly, he then tells the daughter who was hanging up the washing to fetch him some water for his clean

up and then go inside immediately. The man is seen sitting on a log wiping his face with a cloth as the men in vehicles get closer, his daughter then calls him to tell him the water is ready. The man splashes his face and neck with water to clean himself off as the men who we can now see are nazis park their vehicles outside is house. One of the Nazis then approaches the man and asks him “is this the property of perrier LaPadite” to which the man responds “i am Perrier LaPadite”, the other man then introduces himself as “Colonel Hans Landa of the SS” and asks to be invited into mr LaPadite’s home, to which he agrees. As they enter the home we see mr LaPadite’s three daughters lined up to greet the Colonel. Mr LaPadite introduces the Colonel to his family, to which the colonel kisses one of his daughters hands and exclaims “the rumors about your family are true, each one of your daughters are more lovely than the last”. Mr LaPadite invited the Colonel to sit down at the table and asks one of his daughter to get him some wine, to which the Colonel responds by asking her to get him milk instead as mr LaPadite owns a dairy farm. The Colonel then drinks the

milk and says “to both your family and your cows i say ‘Bravo’”. The Colonel then ask mr LaPadite to join him at the table and the tone of the scene
begins to shift. The Colonel then says that this conversation would be better discussed in private and asks mr Lapadite to ask his daughters to step outside. Once the daughters have left the Colonel then says that his french is beginning to exhaust and asks mr LaPadite to switch to english as he has heard that his english is good, to which mr LaPadite agrees. The conversation continues in english with the Colonel saying that he is very familiar with the LaPadite family, but asking if he is familiar with him, mr LaPadite says that he does know who he is and what his job is in france, to which the Colonel asks what he has heard. Mr LaPadie explains that he has heard that the Colonel's job is to run the lasting jews out of france, the colonel then says that that is correct, however, mr Lapadite exclaims his confusion towards this unexpected visit as he says “the germans have already looked through his house and found nothing”,but the Colonel explains that since they are under new managements they just need to close the file on his house once

more. The Colonel then begins to question mr LaPadite about the jewish families that lived in the area before the occupation, he asks mr LaPadite to confirm the family names of the jewish families. After this mr LaPadite asks the Colonel if he could smoke his pipe, to which the Colonel tells him to make himself comfortable. The Colonel then ask mr LaPadite about the Dreyfus family (one of the jewish families) as they were the only ones that have not been accounted for, to which mr Lapadite responds that he has only heard rumors, and that thode rumors were of the family escaping to spain. The Colonel then asks mr LaPadite to name all the members fo the Dreyfus family for documentation. Mr Lapadite then names all of the members of the family and makes an attempt to remember how old they were, as he is explaining this the camera pans down to reveal a family lying beneath the floorboards with

hands over their mouths, peering through the cracks, from this we can assume that these are the Dreyfus’ and mr LaPadite has been hiding the the whole time. Inglorious Bastards is War film as it is set in the 1940’s during the second world war, at the peak of hitlers social reign. The opening scene grasps the audiences attention by immediately introducing an opposing threat to the narrative and creating a fake atmosphere of hospitality within the
house as the Nazi officer acts very polite while doing a job that is a sharp juxtaposition to his attitude, once the audience is shown that they Dreyfus family is in fact in the house the tensio is heightened as it is a waiting game to see if the Colonel will find them or not. Based on the first scene i would estimate that the rest of the movie will follow the narrative of the second world war and the journey of the Dreyfus family. 

 

Jurassic world: Fallen kingdom / sci-fi

                        Studio: Amblin entertainment 
                                          Year: 2018

                                    Director: J. A. Bayona
         Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Jeff Goldblum

The scene starts with the underwater gates of the park opening as a large storm takes place above water, we then see a submarine going through gates into what we can assume is the old park. There is two men in the submarine, one black male and one white male. The white male appears much more nervous and paranoid about entering the park, the black male then attempts to calm him down by saying “relax, anything in here would be dead by now’. From this we can assume that the black male is the more authoritative figure of the two. We then see another shot of the submarine in the murky water scanning its surroundings with a light, from this we can tell that they are there to look for something. The submarine lights then hit the skeletal remains of something, the camera angle changed to behind the submarine giving us a look at what they were searching for. The black make then says “there she is, the indominus rex”. The white male then tentatively operates a claw to extract something from the skeletal remains. The two men work together to cut off a sample of the dinosaurs bone, and then send it up via boey to the surface of the water. We the see the sample rising to the surface from a lower angle, however, theres a lighting flash and a large dark reptilian figure is revealed above the submarine. We then transition to the perspective of the control team above water, the man above water gets radioed by the two men in the submarine that the “specimen is collected. Sent to the surface” to which he yells at the team in a helicopter behind him to “clear for takeoff and begin tracking”. As the helicopter takes off and begins looking for the sample we get a shot of the man on the control panel from behind a bush, this insinuates that there is something watching him, the bushes russel and them man shoots his head around with a gasp as a lighting strikes, but there's nothing there. The boey is then shows bobbing at the surface of the stormy seas with a red flashing light on top of it, a bean of light from the helicopter then hits it and the helicopter radios to the control centre that the sample has been secures “they got what they came there for”.The helicopter then radios to the man at the control centre that they're coming back for him and to close the park gates, the man then radios to the two men in the submarine to get out be

cause he needs to close the gate. The submarine begins its route back the the gates, however, as they are reversing they reverse right into the mouth of a dinosaur obliviously. A shot from above the water is then shown of the light that can be see from the submarine above water, going out. The man at the control centre then begins panickedly radioing the submarine as the signal to the submarine appears to be lost from his tablet. The men in the helicopter then shine their light into the forest behind the control centre to see the trees shaking as if something is moving between them. The man at the control centre beings to close the gates and we can see the helicopter team yelling at him to run and get out, however he cannot hear them as he has headphones on. Theres another flash of lighting and we see a glimpse of a dinosaur behind the man, he still remains oblivious. The man at the control centre then begins yelling at the helicopter team that he cant year them, suddenly we hear the low rumble of a dinosaur and the mans eyes go wide as he takes his headphones off and turns around is shock, another bolt of lighting and the dinosaur is revealed making the man scream and the dinosaur roar. The man makes a break for it towards the helicopter but the helicopter takes off as he starts running, the dinosaur right on his tail. He drops the tablet and the dinosaur steps on it, severing the connection and halting the gates closing. One man in the helicopter tells the other to throw him the ladder down, the man frantically runs towards the ladder with the dinosaur hot on his trail. The ladder goes over the ledge and the man jumps and grabs it at the last moment, just as he thinks hes safe the dinosaur grabs the end of the ladder with his teeth and begins pulling it back. Just as they are about the cut the ladder and the man free to save themselves in the helicopter, the ladder breaks off in the dinosaurs mouth just below where the control man is. As they begin to fly off and celebrate their safety while laughing, we see a shot from above the helicopter of a dinosaur leaping out of the water and biting the ladder and the man off and then sinking back down into the water and swimming away. Jurassic park: fallen kingdom is a Sci-fi movie, we can tell this because they explore themes of dinosaurs that are extinct. Jurassic park was set on the functional island of “Isla Nublar” 120 miles west of costa rica. The scene builds tension with the ongoing storm throughout and the dim lighting giving the audience a sense of not knowing whats going on around them. Based on the
events of the opening scene, i can assume that the rest of the movie will follow the narrative of what happens now that the gates are left open and dinosaurs are still alive. 

Lights out / Horror

  Studio: New Line Cinema RatPac-Dune Entertainment Atomic Monster Productions Grey Matter Productions

Director: David F. Sandberg
Year: 2016

 
Lights out opens as we are introduced to a man who is in a dark fluorescently lit room that we can infer is a basement or cellar of sorts. The man as walking towards the exit of the basement as he hears the sound of something dropping behind him. The man traces his steps back and as he turns the corner we see a dark long haired figure squatting on the ground, the man calls out  the same “Esther” who we can assume is somebody he knows and the figure begins to stand. As the figure stands we hear the sounds of bones and flesh cracking which makes a wave of discomfort rush over the audience. The lights then completely black out which establishes tension in the scene as the audience no longer knows what is happening and is sitting in anticipation waiting for the lights to turn back on. We then begin the see the dimly lit figure of the man waving his arms about trying to get the lights to sense motion and turn back on. he is waving his arms the light suddenly turn back on and we can see the dark figure behind his has moves closer, the man has his back turned to the figure and is completely oblivious that it is moving closer to him. The man then suddenly turns around and jumps back when he releases the figure has moved closer, the man then turns his head again and when he turns back the figure is gone. We can see the visible unease that the man is feeling as he begins to run towards the exit, as he is running however he falls down with a loud yell. The man frantically begins to get up and examines his leg, when he looks down at his leg there is two large red marks and blood dripping from his leg. As the man raises his head we see the dark figure is metres away from him and

begins to move closer and closer. The man watches the figure and stumbles backwards in an attempt to get away from it, but realises that the figure cannot step into the light. When the man realises that he is safe as long as he is in the light be makes a break for it towards the fully lit exit. The man makes it into the exit room and slams the door as he's turning the lights on. He then goes and grabs a baseball bat and turns around to defend himself. When he turns around we see that the basement room is full of mannequins (which are commonly added to deceive the eye in horror movies and add a further sense of unease). Then, the lights in the room begin to flicker again making the man panic further. We then get a wide shot of the lights completely turning out in the room for a perspective in the basement. The man is breathing heavily and scanning his surroundings in the dark while holding his baseball bat at the ready, a creaking sound is then heard. The door handle and
lock are turning making it look like someone is attempting to break in from the basement room, the door opens and the man is shown holding his bat out and scanning is surroundings nervously. Suddenly, the man is forcefully pulled back by a dark being and all that can be heard is the cracking of bones and flesh. An establishing shot of the basement is shown and a light is turned on abruptly revealing the lifeless mangles blood splattered body of the man. The last shot of the opening scene is a shot of the mans face with black holes for eyes, and then suddenly, the lights go out again. Lights out is a Horror movie as the opening scene gives the audience a sense of anxiety as they never know what is happening in the darkness. I think that the narrative of the rest of the movie will be following who the dark figure is and its trail of destruction. I think that the opening scene of Lights Out was very successful in establishing that it is a horror film and keeps the audience on edge throughout.