Genre Specific Analysis: Devil Wears Prada

'The Devil Wears Prada' is a 2006 chick flick comedy by David Frankel, based on the famous novel by Lauren Weisberger. The Opening displays all of the key convensions of s chick flick, aiming its footage at a female audience. The film is stereotypical to its genre, because as it opens, the first shots are of a girl getting ready, and doing her hair and make up, this connotes the genre of the film because make up, hair, and all those girly things are key conventions of a chick flick.

The scene opens with a clip of the actor Anne Hathaway getting ready in the morning, this clip contains the names of two actresses in he film, 'Anne Hathaway' and 'Meryl Streep' because their names are the first to appear after the titles, we can easily guess that they are going to be the protagonists of the film. Also the text which their names are written in is red and gold, and in a calligraphy font, making it look feminine and delicate, connoting the female target audience and genre. The clip then cuts to a wide screened establishing shot of New York City. This connotes the setting of the film and that it is going to take place there.

In addition to the imagery, there is non-diegetic music being played. 'Suddenly i see' is a soundrack by KT Tunstall, the music is light hearted and ennergetic, which connotes a comical, girly theme. The lyrics of the song fit with the imagery, and describe a beautiful girl, and a woman aspiring to be just like her, this connotes ideas about what the film could be about, and what plots could be revealed.

The opening scene is based upon the morning routine idea. It is set in various girls bedrooms and contains shots of them getting ready in the morning. The scene is created using parralell editing, creading the effect that the audience can see everything which is happening. From the start we can see that Anne Hathaway is the main character, becuase she gets the most screen time. However she is shown in contrast to the other girls. The toher girls in the scene are shown to be neat and glmorous. They also take their time in getting ready. Whilst on the other hand Anne Hathaway is shown to be scruffy and rushes herself. When the other girls are applying lipstick and eyeliner, Anne is shown to be quicly applying lipbalm then rushing out of the house. This creates a contrast in the opening scene and also makes it interesting as it starts to apply the personality of her character. This would engage the audience as they would want to follow her story. Also, the characteristics of the 'nerdy unpolular' girl are a stereotypical value of chick flick movies, where they end up falling in love, becoming sucsessfull and realising that they are beautiful, and people find this entertaining.

The scene uses Levi Strauss' theory of binarry opposites to show the lifestyle and personallity of the different girls. For example we are shown to view Anne Hathaways character as unpopular and scruffy, whilkst we are shown to see the other girls as neat and glamorous. The opposites show conflict between eachother as we see majour differences with the parralell editing, as we see opposites which make the scene more interesting and comical, as well as connoting key convensions of a chick flick.

Genre Specific Analysis: Love Actually

'Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport. General opinion makes out that we live in a world of hatred and greed. But I don't see that. Seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as i know none of the phone calls from people on board were messages of hate or revenge, they were all messages of love. lf you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.'

 

Love Actually, the 2003 romantic comedy by Richard Curtis opens in an entirely different way of those films similar to it. For example the stereotypical opening of a Romantic Comedy contains an opening of a plat containing the love between a man and a woman, establishing the main theme of the movie, and also introducing the key characters with a briefly explained plot. However Love Actually opens to a scene at Heathrow Airport, where relatives meet the passengers of the journey in the waiting area near christmas. The scene contains no characters from the film, no story line, it is completely irrelevant to the movie. On the other hand, the opening contains a short narrative, explaining that love exists in many ways, and that love actually is all around us. It also connotes that if you don't have love, or if you don't have someone, you have nothing.

The scene is set in Heathrow Airport, at a busy time of the day. Where the people arriving meet the people who have been waiting for them, to greet them. It opens with a wide angle shot of a crowded area in the airport. We see a woman walking through, and the camera pans to follow her, as she meets up with an old friend and hugs them. This connotes love and affection between them, as we follow her journey through the crowd to meet him, we start to feel empathy as she is shearching for them, then as she finds him we feel her emotion. The credits are set on the bottom half of the screen, and they are played throughout the scene, this makes it easier to concentrate on whats happening behind them, making it easier to follow the story.

The second shot consists of a slow motion mid screen shot. The slow motion gets the audience to carefully look at the emotion portrayed in the shot, and the feelings that are set in the scene. The mid shot of the mother being reunited with her children connoted the happiness she is feeling to be seeing them again, as both of the children run upto her in slow motion to greet her. The scene then continues with similar slow motion shots of different people with different stories, all being reunited with their loved ones. The scene contains a piece of quiet non-diegetic music which helps connote the slow motion shots and the emotion in the scene, this is a common idea which is very often seen in romances, so when people see the slow motion in the opening sequence, they can almost guess that the genre of the movie is going to be a romance. Secondly, 20 seconds into the scene, a non-diegetic voice is projected over the music to set the atmosphere and the theme by announcing how love 'is all around us'. This helps build emotion in the scene because it is dialouge of a theme everyone can relate to, as they all feel love to people in a variety of ways. However this voice over is spoken by the actor Hugh Grant, this actor is widely associated with romantic comedies and chick flicks due to his many roles performed in this genre, making him an important contributer to the setting of the genre and theme.

The scene uses Levi Strauss' narrative theory of binary opposites to show attraction and love in the scene. He uses opposites such as man/woman, adults/children, love/hate to motivate this simple narrative theory which connotes the conflict and attraction between opposites. The scene also uses Barthes' enigma code to set a mystery and to engage the audience in the movie. This has been done my making this scene different from the movie, it doesn't introduce any characters and plots, but it does give us ideas on the main theme. The director has chosen to do this because he wants to keep the rest of the movie seperated from the opening scene, to create a mysterious presence and to engage the audience to carry on watching so everything can be revealed.

Genre Moodboard

Our chosen genre is a Chick Flick. In this mood board we have collected images which represent the stereotypes which are portrayed in this genre. This would help us gain an understanding of what to include in our clip.

First Ideas

For my project, I have decided that I am going to work with Chrissy and Laura, and we are going to create the first 2 minutes of an opening scene of a chick flick, aimed towards teenage girls and young adult women.

Our idea is based on the stories of 2 people, which would be portrayed using a series of parallel edits. However we are using enigma code, to keep their characteristics hidden and to create a mysterious presence about them. However towards the end a problem emerges, which hopefully engages the audience as they would like to see the problem and story solved.

From Script to Scene: Dexter

The original concept idea for dexter came when the director was designing the title. He noticed that the that the letter forms in 'Dexter' are nearly identical right-side up as they are up-side down.  This suited Dexter the character, because when he goes through his transformation into a serial killer, you dont notice many changes. He's exactly the same Dexter except that somethings wrong, keeping his serial killer and insane personality quiet and hidden, like a criminal mastermind.






The Title sequence itself was simply showing Dexter's average morning routine, however this had been filmed using extreme close ups and lighting to show how savage normal things can be. For example, in the first few seconds we see dexter wake up, and have a shave. However when we see dexter shaving, the action is shot in an extreme close up, and with film noire lighting it gives us a creepy impression 
of savageness, connoting to our views on the character of Dexter. Also with the position of his hands, and with the razor, it connotes the image of someone being strangled, and their throats being slit. This also connotes to Dexter's serial killer nature. 
The scene then continues to show Dexter accidentally cutting himself with his razor, and as we see the extreme lose up of dexter's blood running down his throat, we have a horrifying idea of what will come in the movie. 

Next in the scene, we are shown dexter making his breakfast. again the clips are shot with extrmeme close  ups and lighting. We see a shot of Dexter preparing some meat to fry, but we are greeted by a horrific close up view of him slashing the packet and cutting the meat up with a knife. This is shown in a savage violent way to connote the killings of his victims, and give us an insight to what will happen later in the movie. Finally, after his breakfast, we see Dexter preparing dental floss with his teeth. However with the close ups and lighting, the innocent act seems to connote a more violent meaning, and gives us the idea of Dexter strangling something with rope. This connotes to Dexters character because it shows us his violent nature, and what he could be capable of.

The director has used noir lighting and a shallow depth of field to create a savage atmosphere, to connote Dexter's character. The noir lighting is often associated with horror movies, and that general idea helps us associate Dexter with horror and thrillers, due to the lighting techniques. 



We see a short clip of Dexter grinding coffee in a machine, the shot contains noir lighting, and a shallow depth of field, and this connotes the idea that this simple every day task has been gloryfied into a violent image.
 All of the shots in the scene have been shot with the technique of extreme close ups, normal everyday activities are shown to be horrific and savage. For example, this quote was released by the producer of the movie:

"Everything, no matter how mundane or beautiful, has an undercurrent of violence to it. It is just a matter of how closely you look. We are conditioned to see a blossoming flower as beautiful. But if you look closely, if you look differently you will see it more like an explosion. Here we see a mundane morning routine illustrated in extreme close-ups showing the underlying tension found in everyday situations making violence a part of everything."

The scene contains music by Rolfe Kent. The producer originally intended to include the soundtrack by Xploding Plastix, but after editing it into the sequence they decided that it didn't suit the overall nature of Dexter. So the producer was advised to swap the track for one by Rolfe Kent, and after a few days of editing, they decided that the track suited the scene perfectly. The music went hand in hand with the imagery and gave the grotesque imagery a new, humerus light. However the music sounds quite eerie in a strange way, and its completely different from other genres. The music creates suspense perfectly and fits in with the actions and clips in the sequence.

Research analysis of the opening of Juno

key parts of the introduction:

Non-Diegetic music reveals a childish, innocent character of Juno, with the cheerful, whimsical music by a children's balladeer Barry Louis Polisar. It indicates that this movie is going to be a sweet, funny-sad film with an indie spirit.

At the start we see Juno walking from the real world into an animation world. This connotes the idea that she is a loner, escaping from reality into her own world. This explains that she has an imagination, which is very strong in people of a younger age, connoting her innocence and childish nature.

The handmade animation gives us an immature insight on the movie, and also helps us associate Juno as a child. The animation contains over 900 cutouts, all handmade and pieced together. The hand made titles also help us realise that Juno is of a young age, and that she is not adult and mature

In the opening scene, we see Juno drinking from a large Sunny D Bottle. The audience would associate Sunny D as a child's drink, it also associates her with teenagers, as she is walking along carelessly, drinking a sugar drink. This connotes a bit of rebellious and careless personality breaking through.

Finally, we see Juno walking from her animation world back to reality. This connotes her growing up and facing the dangers of the real world, maturing to cope with the current situation where she goes to buy a pregnancy test. This also engages the audience, as they come out of the happy animation and music, back to the reality in which Juno has to face.

Key Conventions

During our lesson we researched a variety of different opening sequences to study the key conventions in a film opening, we came up with a variety of ideas and analysis.

For example, the film 'Brick' uses enigma codes to set up questions that the audience want answers to. This helps to keep the audience engaged with the movie, and adds interest. The opening also includes no introduction of characters, making it mysterious and interesting.

Secondly, the film London to Brighton opens with a harsh disruption, this instantly engages the audience as it opens with a thrill, and uses enigma code again to set questions which we want to see resolved. T^his opening also introduces key characters, and gives us little information on their background and history, making them more mysterious and interesting.

Finally, the film Kick Ass introduces key characters fully, and gives us details of their history and personality. For example, we learn that 'Dave', from 'Kick Ass' is invisible to girls and wants to be a superhero so he can become somebody. We start to associate Dave as the main character and get involved with his story, this engages the audience as they want to see what he becomes.

Main Task

Main Task : Create the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.
to stay organised we have set ourselves strict deadlines, these are:

Research Deadline: 26/11/10

Photo-storyboard Deadline: 3/12/10

Filming Deadline: 07/01/11

Production Deadline: 28/01/11

Evaluation Deadline: 11/02/11