Audience Pleasures

I am intending to write about the audience pleasures of the I.T. Crowd. The I.T. Crowd is a British sitcom by Channel 4. It's set in the London offices and the show revolves around 3 staff members of the I.T. department. According to Blumler and Katz the audience watch sitcoms for 4 main reasons: diversion, surveillance, personal relationships and to define our personal identity. Audiences watch sitcoms to fulfill their psychological needs when they watch sitcoms.

The I.T. Crowd provides diversion as they make audiences laugh and relax. This is because the I.T. Crowd offers its audience realistic scenarios: stereotype characters, familiar situations etc. The audience can relate to those scenarios as they are realistic. Also there are huge amounts of gags which make the audience laugh. For example,

Surveillance is the fact that audiences like to know what is going on in the world. The I.T. Crowd provides surveillance as the show shows us how a technology department works. This places the audience in a position of power as they will feel superior to the foolish behaviors of the characters. For example, in the episode "Yesterday's Jam", Moss speaks the truth at the wrong moments and the situation becomes very awkward. Watching all the characters get everything wrong makes the audience feel superior.

Personal relationships refers to our need to interact with other people. This is provided by forming virtual relationships with the characters in sitcoms. The audiences laugh at the characters in the I.T. Crowd however not in a rude way. The characters are designed to be liked by the audiences as they are so hopeless at their jobs and say funny things that make the audience laugh.

RESEARCH: The Opening of Now You See Me (Louis Leterrier, 2013)

Production Log 7 (10th Dec.2013)

I watched the opening of this movie. The genre of the movie was crime. The opening scene is very interesting – you have 4 3 minute long brief stories about 4 different magicians, the title of the movie does not appear until those stories are done. Also, there are no opening credits. This inspires us as we have many characters in out plot and we could make our movie opening similar to this opening - we can create brief stories about each character and put them together. However, we will add in opening credits. This is because we will not create a whole movie therefore the audience will not know if this is an opening or if this is just an extract of a film.

RESEARCH: Art of the Title - Sherlock Holmes

Production Log 6 (3rd Dec.2013)

Analysis of Film Opening  Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie, 2010)

I have analysed the opening sequence of Sherlock Holmes. The opening sequence is visually stunning as it combines film footage with VFX to create an authentic Victorian period quality. For example, the titles appear to be hand-written on old paper in sepia ink with watery blotches and ink splatters. Pen and ink line wash is used in combination with longitudinal linotype. Many close-ups of the heroic protagonists merge with live action, again bringing this Victorian period drama up to date. The colours are all muted to suggest the gas-lit streets and murky corners of the Victorian underworld, a place of danger and fear.

RESEARCH: The Opening of Zen

Production Log 5 (12th Nov.2013)

In today’s lesson, we have analysed the opening of Zen (BBC 1), a television thriller. We noticed the ways in which genre was signalled:

• There were images of guns which signals the world of crime
• There were images of key to refer to prisons – the key to open the locks of a prison
• The protagonist wearing a formal and dark coloured suit with sunglasses, looking formal and authoritative
• Famous Italian buildings that people could recognise, such as buildings relating to Italian police headquarters “The Questura” clearly inscribed in stone

This detective television series featuring Aurelio Zen is based on the novels of Michael Dibdin. It is set in Rome, Italy, which links to the fact that the opening had many visual clues that signalled the Italianicity of the drama. For example:

• The red, white and green vertical bands with connotations of the Italian flag
• Silhouetted images of St Peter’s Dome, as well as bird’s eye shots of St Peter’s Square which are iconic emblems of Rome, renowned the world over
• Repeated images of Fiat Cinquecento cars, which again reinforces the Italianicity of the opening

RESEARCH: ScoopIt!

Production Log 4 (5th Nov.2013)

Here is my scoopit page: PLEASE CLICK HERE

Here are some screenshots:

Call Sheet (template) 5.11.2013

MY CALL SHEET

• Title of page:
• Track:
• Length: 3 minutes
• Shoot date:
• Location:
• IMAGE: FROM GOOGLE MAPS
• Crew: Sabrina Yu
• Crew: Bertie Simpson
• Crew: Sisi Nemeth
• Camera equipment:
• Lighting equipment:
• Props:
• Wardrobe: (name of character)
• Wardrobe: (name of character)
• Wardrobe: (name of character)

Iron Man (2008) Analysation Homework 15.10.2013

The genre of Iron Man is action and adventure.

The extract opens with a boy screaming. Right after that, we see Iron Man flying from the sky and landing. Immediately we can tell that there is speed and motion which identifies that this is an AA film. We also see that Iron Man is the main hero in the film. He is a typical superhero as he has superpowers since a normal person can't fly.

As he lands, one of the villains uses a gun to shoot him however it doesn't work. This is because of his iron outfit. He stands up in front of the villain and punches him. The villain flies away. This is somehow exaggerated as a normal human being wouldn't have the strength to punch someone and the person will go flying away, which reinforces my point that he is a stereotypical superhero.

Iron Man then raises his arm and some sort of fire ball bursts out of his hand. The villains all die instantly which makes Iron Man seem very powerful since he has the power to kill someone very easily. However we see there are also good people there, so Iron Man aims at the villains and kills them off without harming the good people. This shows us that he's a good superhero - he doesn't harm people who are good and only punishes ones who are evil.

Towards the middle of the extract, Iron Man starts flying again. However immediately he falls onto the ground as someone has attacked him. This creates jeopardy and suspense - this creates tension as the audience will think about questions like: is Iron Man dead? is he hurt? what's going to happen next? The answer has been quickly told to us after a few seconds as we see his hand reaching out from the rubble. As he stands up a bullet was shot at him from a tank, however he quickly steps aside to avoid it, and fires a fire ball which causes the tank to explode. This again reinforces my point of making Iron Man look very powerful since everything seems very powerless to him.

To view the movie extract please click HERE.

RESEARCH: Similar films - The English Patient and Made in Dagenham

Production Log 3 (15th Oct.2013)

During the class we have watched the opening of The English Patient (dir. Anthony Minghella, 1996). The movie opens with a close up shot of a hand painting a human's figure as if on a cave wall. Then it cross dissolves to an areal shot of sand dunes with a similar colour tone. This also inspires our group as we can open our first scene with a close up shot which creates enigma. To add on to that we can open our scene of a person writing something - maybe a marriage certificate, death certificate or even a psychiatrist's report.This will build up suspense as the audience will not know what this is all about and will want to watch more and find out.

We have also watched the opening of Made in Dagenham (dir. Nigel Cole, 2010). The scene opens with a wide shot of a crowd of factory workers going to their work place as their work day starts. This inspires us as we could find realistic establishing shots for atmosphere. We could shoot in places such as the railway station or shopping centres to make the opening more realistic.

RESEARCH: Similar films - Spooks

Production Log 2 (7th Oct.2013)

(Spooks, 2002)

I watched the opening of this TV series. The genre of it was spy. First you have the build-up of what has previously happened. Then comes the opening sequence. The whole opening sequence seems really modern and computer generated. The colour tone of the opening sequence contains generally blue and grey colours which makes the opening look cold and stark. It looks very realistic, in contrast to the opening of Pacific Rim that I have analysed in the last production log. Also, as you can see in the picture I have above, the font makes the whole opening look very modern, almost like CGI and the brackets add on to the affect. After the opening, the first scene was when a person woke up by the phone. Then you see a lot of quick cuts of people speaking on the phone simultaneously, which shows us it is a busy world and creates tension. After that the audience can see there's a man sitting on an arm chair, listening to music and looking very nervous and sad. Suddenly, people break into his house through the windows wearing black costumes and holding guns. This is what makes the genre spy, since there are a lot of action shots (breaking in the windows) and the mise-en-scene which includes guns, helicopters also black costumes.

Planning: The Brief

I am working in a group of 3. The other members of my group are Sisi and Bertie. We have chosen Brief 7 (video). The opening sequence from a new film, including titles, in any genre or mix of genres such as a comedy or thriller together with a storyboard. Maximum length: 3 minutes.

RESEARCH: Art of the title - Pacific Rim

Production Log 1 (24th Sep.2013)

Before we started filming our film opening, we decided to watch some other film openings for inspiration. We watched those on the ‘Art of the Title’ website: http://www.artofthetitle.com. This site is excellent as it is dedicated to displaying and examining title opening sequences. I picked three opening sequences to analyse in detail: Pacific Rim (Guillermo Del Toro, 2013), The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004), and Sherlock Homes (Guy Ritchie, 2010).

 

(Pacific Rim, Guillermo Del Toro, 2013)

They chose a suitable font. It’s bold, masculine and metallic therefore we can tell this film is going to be adventurous (choice of font affects the genre). They focused the opening on dark colours which are strong and dramatic like purple and red. This creates tension and builds up suspect. They have lots of close up shots of the robots as the light catches on them, which shows there is a strong colour contract. This places us in the world of robots.