Witness Opening Scene

Director: Peter Weir. Year Made: 1985

In this clip we join an Amish boy and his Amish mother arriving in Philadelphia Station. The Amish are very simple living people. So to a little Amish boy the Philadelphia Station is a world apart from his village.

From 0:01 - 0:08 seconds there is a low angle shot of a biblical related statue (the Angel of Mercy). This shot suggests power. From 0:08 - 0:12 there is a slightly low angle medium close up of the boys face. The hat on his head connotes to a halo, by showing this he looks innocent. Over all of this there is the non-diegetic sound of a soundtrack. The music is a peaceful sustained note. It allows the boy to look even more fascinated by this statue. At 0:17 there is an extremely high angle over the shoulder shot from the statue. This makes the little boy seem very insignificant. The reason i say this is because everyone else in the shot is walking past the magnificent statue not taking a glimpse of notice and this little boy is staring in awe. This shows just how appreciative he is to be witnessing this statue in all its glory. At 0:33 you see the mother and child sitting in the station. There are all by themselves making them both isolated figures. Slightly in the right of the frame there is a vanishing point which in this case is the door to the public toilets. This is a brilliant example of the rule of thirds which Peter Weir uses here. The vanishing point takes up roughly one third to the right of the screen and the other two thirds to the left of the screen are the bleak and seemingly abandoned station.

At 1:12 there is a man in the toilets washing his face. It could be argued that he is cleaning himself from some of the dirty work he has got up to and that he is involved in the grimy underworld of crime. Weir uses the ambient grim lighting of the public toilets. The colours in these facilities are very bleak. Lots of creams and browns and very plain and gives the whole room a rather 'grubby' look and feel.

At 1:25 Wier begins to use a shot which is repeated throughout this scene. This is the use of a point of view shot through a crack of the cubicle door. The reason why this is so brilliant is because of its sheer simplicity. At 1:52 there is another example of the use of thirds. We see the man on the left's face however we do not see the man on the right's face. This means that the man can remain enigmatic and becomes another piece of this puzzle for the audience to try to work out. The victim is in the middle of these two men and this connotes that there is no escape from what is about to happen. This incident happens at 1:58. Notice that the jacket used to smother the man is blood red. This is almost trying to subliminally make this murder more violent.

Once Upon a Time In America Opening Scene

Once Upon a Time In America is a gangster thriller. Directed by Sergio Leone.

During the opening titles there is a soundbridge of the song "God Bless America" written in 1918. The version used here is sung by Kate Smith, 1938. In this film Leone is using it sarcastically and ironically.
The first shot is a silhouette of an enigmatic femme fatale. It couyld be argued that the lighting is almost chiaroscuro lighting but is really more noir lighting. She looks quite glamarous. She is wearing pearls around her neck which can also represent tears and foreshadow what events are still to come. She is by herself making her out to be an isolated figure. She goes to turn a lamp on and three men step out. Costume here is very important and Leone has gone with the traditional trilby hat and long coats with a cigar. There is a shot from behind her when she is confronted by the gentlemen and you can see an archway over her. This is a thriller convention and implies that she has been framed in some way, shape or form. She is shot and falls dead onto a bed. The lamp she had turned on before is then turned off by one of the men. This is metaphoric for her life as the lamp light fades just as she breathes her terminal breath. The lighting in this scene is almost sepia.

Essex Boys Opening Scene

The film is based loosely around events in December 1995 that culminated in the murders of three drug dealers in Rettendon, Essex, UK. On 6th December Patrick Tate, Craig Rolfe and Tony Tucker, three drug dealers well known to the police, were lured to Workhouse Lane, Rettendon. There they were blasted to death with a shot gun while sitting in their Range Rover. They had been lured to their deaths on the pretext of a lucrative drugs deal. The three bodies were found the following morning, 7 December 1995.

Above is the first scene to Terry Winsor’s' "Essex Boys" starring Charlie Creed-Miles, Sean Bean and Gareth Milne. The scene opens with the credits in white writing on a black background. This is accompanied by a harsh scraping sound like nails on a chalkboard. This leaves the viewer uncomfortable as it is a cringe worthy sound to have to endure. When each name is shown there is an unsettling fanfare of music. Although it is unsettling it is not harsh and the sound is left ringing until the next name is shown creating suspense. However when the title 'Essex Boys' appears, a harsh note rings out along with one of the loudest scratches so far.

The credits end at roughly 1:24. From 1:24 to approximately 1:38 it could be argued that chiaroscuro lighting is used (scene pictured below) because there is a single light in the background casting shadows towards the camera making the figure look very ominous. Chiaroscuro lighting also gives the audience a point to focus on. It helps to add a sense of mystery and nightmare. It connotes to other noir thrillers and helps to add a sense of menace or corruption. Films which use similar lighting are David Fincher's "Fight Club" and Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski’s "The Matrix". 

All we are allowed to see at this point is the silhouette of a man and the side of a car in a run down, weary looking garage. This alone upholds one thriller convention: location, chiaroscuro lighting and making the viewer very uncomfortable and unaware. The garage is a confined space and gives a feeling of entrapment and claustrophobia. At 2:11 there is a voiceover, this could link to David Michod's "Animal Kingdom". Another feature which could link to Animal Kingdom is that Billy and Jay from Animal Kingdom are both roughly 18 and very young to be going into this dark, criminal underworld. Another link to Animal Kingdom is that both of the stories are told from the young men’s point of view.

This could foreshadow the rest of the film and give the viewer a hint of what is to come. Also it could set the audience up for the type of film this is going to be. A light is turned on to reveal that this threatening looking character is actually probably no older than 18 years of age. This might have been used to confuse the audience and to imply that you can’t trust everything you are going to see in this film. It keeps the audience guessing. 

At 2:11 there is a voiceover heard. There is a cultural signifier at this point because the voiceover (meant to be Billie’s voice) is in an Essex accent. He sounds quite innocent. The reason the producer used this is to establish with the audience who Billy is and what role he might play in the bigger picture and where he happens to stand in the pecking order. We are told that he has been asked to drive Jason Locke around for a few days. This tells us that the young man is desperate for money but wants to please this client of his. He is easily persuaded and manipulated which are traits of being young and in-experience. Jason Locke has been out of jail for less than 24 hours at this point. Why we are told this is to inform the audience of who this man is. The audience also start to piece together this man’s story and his background. The first establishing shot we have of Jason Locke is a point of view shot from Billie’s perspective through a filthy windscreen of a car at 2:21. This implies that he is involved in some rather dirty work and doesn’t have a clean conscience. That he comes from the filthy, boundary-less, world of crime.

Costume here is very important. Billy is wearing mainly plain clothes. The reson for this is that you can usually tell a lot by someones clothes and yet it keeps the audience guessing at what Billy is like because he doesnt talk at all the opening scene due to the voiceover doing it for him. When we first see Jason however (at 2:21) through the windscreen he is wearing a boisterous yellow and black shirt and a leather jacket. This tells us that Jason is quite vain and possibly quite a bold character because of the shirt he is wearing. As for the leather jacket, stereotypically the people who wear leather jackets are "hard-nut", butch bikers.

At 2:32 an unsettling soundtrack begins. The audience may have been lulled into a false sense of security with Billy at the start and this is to throw the audience back into the real and violent world which this film dictates. The director has also used a very good example of pathetic fallacy which is the use of the weather to foreshadow coming events. In the scene the sky is cloudy and grim and the road is wet and shiny. The entrance to the tunnel becomes a vanishing point and there is even subliminal messaging because you can clearly see a road sign saying "stop" and this could be telling Billy to stop because he doesn’t know what he is getting himself into. A link to Peter Weir's "Witness" when the little boy is going to the toilet in the station and the vanishing point is the toilet door. The tunnel is also another confined space again to reiterate the feeling of entrapment. Once they are actually inside the tunnel it could be argued that it represents the barrel of a gun. 

At 3:00 you can see Billy from the front of the car looking in on him driving. In this tunnel there are strobe lights on the ceiling. You can see these strobe lights reflected on the car windshield. These could represent prison bars and again foreshadow coming events. Billy is also not looking comfortable at all with the situation he is in. Whilst Jason Locke is relaxing in the back seat of the car looking almost tranquil. This could be used to display the contrast between the two characters.

Coming out of the tunnel (which was actually filmed in Dartmoor Tunnel, Essex, UK) there is a shot from the moving car say "Welcome to Essex". This could almost be interpreted as "Welcome to Jasons' Kingdom" for he is one of the more infamous criminals within Essex.

From 3:44 to 4:38 we see the more violent side of Jason Locke. This is the reason that he is so calm in the car is to show the contrast between the two sides of him. Some would say verging on bi-polar. The weapon of choice for Jason to beat up this enigmatic "friend" of his is the leg of a chair. This is the more humane method of "teaching him a lesson" because when this poor man is taken around to be put in the back of the van, Jason throws a bottle full of acid in his face. But whilst Jason is beating up "an old friend of his", Billy is sitting in the van. The look on Billie’s face portrays a mix of confusion, pity and fear. A good example of this expression is at 4:11. Due to the fact that Billy is sitting in the van there returns the divide between Billy and Jason. Ironically this divide again happens to be a car windscreen. 

At 4:38 there is a fantastic wide shot of the blank white van. There are no marks on it at all. Also because it is white this could suggest purity and innocence however this could not be further from the truth. The white, unmarked van also acts as an enigma because of the lack of any obvious markings.

On the way to where Billy and Jason are planning to take this guy, Jason notices he has got some of the acid on his shirt. This just goes to show how little he cares for the poor soul with acid all over his face but also shows Jason's vanity.

Finally they arrive at the Essex Marshes. Billy is sent round to the back of the van to let the man out. He is cautious in doing so and looks very nervous because he is so new to this whole concept. The Essex Marshes are bleak, featureless and have no boundaries. This could reflect that from Billie’s point of view, Jason seems to have no moral boundaries. This is a similar landscape to when Craig Cody (played by Sullivan Stapleton) is shot dead in Animal Kingdom. The featureless landscape gives a sense of isolation and a sense of out in the open with nowhere to hide.  In Animal Kingdom Craig Cody is shot in a large field which stretches on for miles.

What Are Universal Doing?

Universal has two theme parks in Orlando, USA. These are very successful because they target families by using the themes from their films with the park rides e.g. there is a ride called Harry Potter and The Forbidden Journey, The Incredible Hulk Coaster etc.

Universal are also linked to UMG (Universal Music Group). Some of the artists which are signed to UMG include:

·         U2

·         Rihanna

·         Cheryl Cole

·         All American Rejects

·         Stevie Wonder

·         3 Doors Down

·         Snow Patrol

·         Take That

·         Rolling Stones

·         Bon Jovi

·         Shania Twain

Some Universal pictures which are predicted to be released soon (late 2011-2012 at the earliest) are:

·         Peter Berg’s “Battleship”.

·         John Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg’s “American Reunion”.

·         Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda’s “ Dr.Suess’ The Lorax”

A film due to be released 2^nd December 2011 is Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s “The Thing” pictured below.

A small side fact about “The Thing” is that it stars Joel Edgerton who plays Barry ‘Baz’ Brown in Animal Kingdom.

While the film was originally set for release in April, Universal Pictures changed the date to October 14, 2011, to allow time for reshoots. The aim of the reshoots was to "enhance existing sequences or to make crystal clear a few story beats or to add punctuation marks to the film's feeling of dread." There was a video game made called “The Thing” and it was a third person survival horror game. The game was presented as a sequel to John Carpenter's 1982 film “The Thing”. It was released in North America for the PS2 on August 19, 2002, on the PC on August 20, 2002 and on the Xbox on September 9, 2002.

Peter Berg’s “Battleship” has been accused of being like “transformers but on water”. However this has given review websites the opportunity to rip it to shreds. Such websites include screenrant.com, latinoreview.com, hollywoodreporter.com and finally facebook.com. Battleship was produed in USA. Battleship is what is known as a four quadrant film meaning that there is an aspect of the film which everyone will enjoy. These are things like romance, action, sci-fim, comedy etc. Battleship is due to be released on the 20th April 2012 in the UK and due to this fact the figures are not certain yet the budget is being estimated to come to a whopping $200,000,000 (£127,180,000). It's not suprising with the large budget that they can afford to have a sar studded cast with such actors as Liam Neeson and the famous popstar Rihanna.

What Made 'Animal Kingdom' a Marketing Success?

Director, David Michod, and Producer, Liz Watts, created a lot of hype of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. The interesting thing is that they accomplished this during the early stages of shooting. I personally believe the reason or this was to create a larger audience. The audience wouldn’t have been very big if they hadn’t taken this approach because it is an independent film and the director is very well known. In Animal Kingdom there aren’t any A-list actors. This could be another reason why Animal Kingdom needed the support from the social networking sites. The only known actor in Animal Kingdom was Guy Pearce and yet in the trailer they don’t “sell him”. The film was incredibly low budget compared to some other films releasing at the moment in multiplex theatres, for example Peter Berg’s “Battleship” which is due to be released in 2012. The budget is estimated to come to a whopping $200,000,000! Animal Kingdom’s budget came to just under a measly $5 million. This said however doesn’t damage the outstanding film which David Michod has created.

Animal Kingdom also refers to certain reviews which have shone the film in good light. These newspaper reviews range from the Los Angeles Times where Kenneth Turan claimed the film was “…immaculate”. The Independent (UK) published that the film was “…remarkable”. Todd McCarthy from Variety Magazine wrote the film was “ambitious and powerful”.

Animal Kingdom was nominated for and won several awards (an example of this would be the LAFCA award from the 2010 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. This was one by Jacki Weaver for Best Supporting Actress) however I believe the most renowned prize this production won was the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. 

The trailer for ‘Animal Kingdom’ was very successful. Here is the hyperlink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5BsYRmMfus

They were pushing the theme of violence hard. Even in the logo for the film there is a gun incorporated within the text (the ‘G’ in the word Kingdom).

The advert includes a popular song. This song is “All out of love” by Airsupply. A lot of people recognise this song and so can relate to the trailer. Another reason why they include a popular song such as this is so that when you here this song you may think of the trailer. It could be argued that it is a form of subliminal messaging.

How Has Working Title Adapted To Changes In the Film Industry?

Recently Working Title produced the film ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’. This film was towards the low budget end of the spectrum however they did go to Universal for financing. Nevertheless Universal turned the project down. So next Working Title looked to European based countries for finance and finally Studio Canal gave them the sufficient funding to complete this project. This could be one reason why a lot of the locations were based in Europe from sunny London, UK to Istanbul, Turkey.

Another reason why it did so well in Europe is it is based on a best-selling novel written marvellously by John lé Carre. A lot of people were familiar with the novel thus it was familiar to them and appealed to the older target audience because a child for example would not have read this fine piece of literature.

Universal bought Working Title to create less competition in the market but also so Working Title could stop fretting about funding and concentrate on making films which the European market seemed to love so much due to things like Working Title being a British Company and doesn’t use many things like CGI etc and ravish the lower fund films.
In this modern world we live in there are so many more platforms to consumer film on at home than just television e.g. computer on iPlayers for example or YouTube, smartphones, Playstation3 etc and because of this Working Title have had to adapt and make the cinema more of an experience. They have also had to compete with the new technology of 3D and CGI etc which Universal is very fond of using. That said however a lot of Universals films currently are aimed more towards the younger market/perhaps branching into family films. An example of this would be James Cameron’s “Battleship” which is very action packed. Battleship is due to be released on the 20^th of April 2012. Another brilliant example of Universals’ CGI saga would be another one of James Cameron’s films: Avatar which was released in the UK on the 19^th of December 2009. Just to demonstrate the vast scale of 3D films which were released in 2010, a staggering 28 3D films were released; this is double the number for 2009; this amount generated a whopping £241.8 million in the UK.

To conclude there are more 3D films than normal films releasing at the moment the main reason for this is that producers can make more money from 3D films by charging more people for more money since the public are more interested in seeing a new film in 3D because it’s more of an experience compared to home viewing. Although trends show that people who go to the cinema to see a normal (non 3D) films are still more than happy to buy them on DVD.
“6.2 million DVD players were sold in 2010, and 1.1 million Blu-ray stand-alone players were sold.”
 “92% of households own at least one DVD player and 8% own a Blu-ray player”

Brief Synopsis of Our Thriller: MARKED

Our thriller is going to start off with a boy asleep in bed. He is going to wake up due to the loud "bang" of a gunshot. Hearing this noise the boy gets out of bed to investigate. Checking a few of the rooms upstairs he finds nothing out of place: although he notices that in his parents’ bedroom the bed covers are ruffled as if they had got up in a rush. Establishing with himself that there is nothing wrong upstairs he heads downstairs and starts to walk carefully down the hall. He stops for a second to hear the television buzzing in the front room. He creaks open the door to find his father 'asleep' on the sofa with his head facing away from the boy. The boy goes to shake him to wake him up only to find that as the fathers arm (which was resting over his chest) slips down that there is a bullet wound through his chest and blood down the front of his shirt. The fathers head rolls towards the boy to reveal a scarred crest on the father’s neck. It looks like it had been burnt into his neck although not freshly. It had the look that it had been faded with time although still prominent on the pale white skin. Panicking the boy reels back in shock and horror. He then runs towards the door, flings it open and runs down the street and around the corner. Little does he know that he is being watched by a man with a gun from his own bedroom window? The boy runs around the corner to find himself caught in the headlights of a car. The car seems to be almost waiting for him. There is a close up of the drivers hand to reveal the same mark as on the father’s neck. From here it will fade to black and then on the black background the words "MARKED" appear; the reason for this being that it is the title. We thought it would be good to end like this because it ends on a cliff-hanger and there is also the enigma of who is the person watching him from his bedroom window, who is the driver, who has shot the boys’ father down in cold blood but furthermore who is this infamous gang?