This is a 'transcipt' of the opening from the film 'A Fistful Of Dollars' (1964), which lists the order of the time the credits roll in:
0.21 - Clint Eastwood
0.29 -'Fistful Of Dollars' - Film Title
0.38 - Mariane Koch
0.44 - Johnny Wels,
W. lukschy
0.52 - Antiono Prieto
Jose Calvo
Margherita Lozano
Daniel Martin
1.03 - Photography,
Music,
Art Director Credits
1.12 - Unit Manager,
Assistant Producer,
Film Editors Credits
1.21 - Script Girl,
Sound
Technical Advise
1.25 - Production Managers
1.32 - Producers- Harry Colombo and George Papi
1.37 - Technicolor and Techniscope
1.50 - Sergio Leone (Director)
2.10 - Cuts to Film
The title credits, along with the music, are used, not only to inform the audience of you has worked on the film, but to help establish the genre of 'A Fistful Of Dollars', which is of the western genre. Each time a title comes on the screen it goes along with the sound of a bullet, which is a common feature of the film. The animation used for the credits is of a amn riding a horse and shooting people, which are features of the western genre of the film.
The opening
sequence of The Dark Knight (2008), directed by Christopher Nolan uses a
mixture of micro features, which blend together to give the film a tense,
suspenseful 'feel' to the film. Whilst the opening sequence may not actually
introduce any of the characters of the film (being a sequel, it doesn't need to
really do this anyway, the dialogue of the characters in the opening, the bank
robbers, is used to try and add a ‘mystery’ vibe to this man, ‘The Joker’ they
are constantly referring to. Even though The Joker never actually shows his
face in this scene the audience soon begin to realize that he is among the bank
robbers themselves. Even though the audience has never seen The Joker before,
they know which one of the robbers he is, juts because of the way he is
described by the bank robbers. The scene is tense because every is waiting for
the big reveal, they want what The Joker is going to do- the audience know he
is crazy, despite only being introduced to this character five minutes ago.
Even though
many of the audience members would know that they are going to see a Batman
film along the same lines as the first (Batman Begins), some audience members
may go into the film not knowing anything about it. The Dark Knight is,
ultimately, a film of the superhero but it is highly influenced by other genres
of film such as gangster, thriller and action. One of the bank robbers mention
that “only a crazy person would rob a mob bank”, which shows that this film isn't about the gangsters being the ones in control this time- they aren't the ones
doing the robbing, they are the ones being robbed. This clearly shows how,
while the film may explore some aspects of the gangster film genre, it is about
something more this time, something “bigger” than the gangsters.
One micro
feature which is used to create ‘mystery’ and ‘suspense’ is sound, and how it
uses different forms of non-dietetic and dietetic sounds to gather a response
from the audience. The non-dietetic buzzing sounds start as soon as the opening
credits do and it builds up even more throughout the opening, mixing with
traditional non-dietetic music, before eventually being ‘smashed’ at the same
time the glass is broken. Whilst a traditional film opening may use a track
song, this film blends the non-dietetic and dietetic sounds together, so they
are ‘one’ with the film, which helps to stop and start the tension. The sound used here is worked around the narrative
of the film, almost done so that you do not notice it as it just feels natural in
correlation with the scene.
Finally,
another good micro-feature which is used to good effect here is mise-en-scene.
The guns and suits are used to show the film borrows from the more ‘actiony’
genres, but the clown masks used for the robbery show how it remains quite separate
and unique from the norm, whilst also helping to establish the narrative for
the story and the character The Joker.
This the final cut of the Preliminary Task, which was filmed for our coursework. We each took on individual roles for this task with myself as Cinematographer, Jack as the Editor and James the Producer. We filmed it within a two hour session, which included both the filming and editing.
Our group has been discussing various ideas of what genre our title sequence should be, coming to the conclusion that these are the ones which we feel would be best:
Zombie Film
Cop/Mystery Noir Film
Horror/ Slasher
Comedy
Thriller
Found Footage (Chronicle, the Blair Witch Project, etc.)
