Evaluation - Part 1 - Summary of Brief

This piece of work was to create a opening sequence for a British Social Realism film, that had to be two minutes long with boundaries of 10%, so plus or minus 12 seconds. In addition to this we had to make the film follow the ethos of Film 4, this meant that we had to make sure that the film follows certain themes and styles of film that they broadcast. Film 4's ethos is to show film that is representative of reality in a suburban or urban environment. This is why our film was set in the local area since it is fitting to the ethos in terms of settings and locations. Another thing that Film 4 focus on is themes of violence, drugs, depression and sexual behavior and a very negative and downbeat narrative meaning that the film would have very few positive moments.

Finally the last thing that our brief mentioned was that the film opening had to be based on British culture as well as be targeted for a teenage audience and above, so around the ages of 15-24 years. 

Main Title Graphic at 1:12

The title for our film is 'Intifada' which is an Arabic wording meaning terrorism in English, right away it tells you that the film is going to be about the ethnic group of Asian people in the UK. On top of this it sounds as though it is a negative word even if you don't understand what it means, it gives the impression of something sinister in the film and so connotes that the rest of the film is going to be quite dark as well. Based on the English translation of the title it connotes that the film is going to be about racism and discrimination including violence and murder. This connotes further that the film will be based on the Muslim community because one of the stereotypes in the Western world is that this is the group of people which are the terrorists. The titles meet the brief because they were created using LiveType and as well as that the fonts were entirely copyright free. 

In the opening sequence we made sure to include different types of editing to convey different meanings to the audience Two examples of this would be the cuts which are very common during the scene when the younger brother runs into and out of his brothers room after reading the messages that are on his phone. This can be denoted in my opening sequence at 1:18 and afterwards. 

From this scene we can denote a quick rapid succession of cuts in the video, which connotes a lot of action or emotion is taking place, that something bad has just happened and in this case since it is a British Social Realism film, it is likely it is going to have been to do with crime or violence. A cut also connotes that all the events are happening right after each other and that there is not gap in time between each of the different shots.

Finally my opening sequence follows the different conventions of an opening sequence, for example one convention was the action sequence, which is the same as the shots above but also including the police chase scene, this is where the pace of the opening sequence increases to reflect that sudden change in atmosphere and mood of the film, in this case it is where the audience discovers that the elder brother is taking part in a murder/terrorist attack. This is conventional of almost all opening sequences for example the film 'This Is England' uses this during the action montage of the film, this shows that around the country at the same time there is widespread violence but also during the scene where the Asian families windows has been broken connotes racism in the streets of the UK. This is exactly the same moral that my film tries to put across as well since it involves a fight scene and discrimination, only in my film the roles of ethnicity have been reversed.

In the shots shown above, there is no indication to chronological order in terms of the film unlike in my opening sequence but it still puts across the same feeling of fast paced action and a sequence of events because it is an action montage.

Institutional graphics to our trailer

Another example of this would also be the institutional graphics at the start of the opening sequence, in this case it would be the Film 4 logo and the Bulldog Productions logo in my film. The reason that these are both included is because they are the two companies that actually produced the opening sequence for the film. The reason that this is important in a film is because the companies that produce the film will often make a very specific type of film and that makes their content and their company recognisable for producing it as well. You would then expect that company to be good at that genre of film production since it would have focused on that are in particular and so in a British Social Realism film you would expect them to use themes such as violence, drugs, abuse and neglect in their films as well.

Fish Tank Institutional Graphics

Any film could be used for this as they are in almost every single production but the film that I chose the example from was Fish Tank, here we can denote two different institutions from those used in mine but that produce the same kind of content in terms of genre of film and the themes that they explore. We can also see that they have the same structure as the opening sequence to mine, as it is typical for these graphics to actually take up the entire screen unlike the title graphics.