OPENING SEQUENCE- STORYBOARD

In preparation for the production stage of my product I have created a storyboard to essentially bring my ideas together and to gain a greater understanding of what shots I want to do and when.

By doing a storyboard I will save more time when shooting my film as I will have a clear vision as to what to film and how the actors need to portray their roles in my opening sequence.

KEY CONVENTIONS OF OPENING/TITLE SEQUENCES

Conventions of an Opening Sequence

1) Establishment of a scene/setting.

 

2) Characters sometimes, the establishment of them, sometimes creating a mysterious aura about a character.

3) A lot of the time is fast paced, throwing the audience straight into the action.

4) Sometimes set in the past to set the tone and situation or in the future to build up to that moment.

Conventions of a Title Sequence

1) Composer

2) Producer

3) Actors

4) Title of Film

5) Studio

6) Distributor

PITCH PRESENTATION- SCORE

HISTORY OF THE OPENING SEQUENCE

Film titles made their appearance in the earliest silent films, along with letter cards (or inter-titles), which provided context. Here is the main title from D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance” (1916), which many reviewers and historians consider the greatest film of the silent era.

Opening credits since the early 1980s, if present at all, identify the major actors and crew, while the closing credits list an extensive cast and production crew. Historically, opening credits have been the only source of crew credits and the cast, although over time the their was a tendency to repeat the cast, and perhaps add a few players, with their roles identified (as was not always the case in the opening credits), evolved.

The ascendancy of television movies after 1964 and the increasingly short "shelf-life" of films in theatres has greatly contributed to the credits convention which came with television programs from the beginning, of holding the vast majority of cast and crew information for display at the end of the show.

Films would only use basic titles and up until television came around and dominated the visual scene, cinemas started to step up and upgrade from picture titles to actual visuals.