Research Opening Titles

Researching the Genre
Being as the guidelines for our film were to produce a 2 minute film opening I decided to look at some other film openings for inspiration and to get ideas. We had already decided as a group that our film would be a 'Psychological Drama/Thriller' so I decided to look on IMDb (Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com) and look for the top rated films for the genre's similar to ours (thriller, horror and drama).

Films I Researched
The main films I looked at were: Fight Club (www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523), One Hour Photo (www.imdb.com/title/tt0265459) and The Butterfly Effect (www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879). The reason I chose these films was I felt that they all had some sort of relevance to the film we want to create. They all have a character who has some sort of mental illness and from these films I can get ideas for camera shots, character body language, music, editing, and maybe mise en scene.

The film 'Fight Club' is based around a skitzofrenic character who believes he is fighting with another person but it is actually his imagination and he is fighting with himself. - Although the character for our movie will not be skitzofrenic he will seem to have a double personality because when he is taking photos and following the one girl he will seem very strange, mysterious and a little creepy. However when he is at school working as a teacher he is completely normal and you are maybe unaware that they are same person.
The opening sequence to Fight Club is very specific to the film and is almost all effects and only a short clip of actual footage. What we see is the inside of his brain and we are taken through all of the parts of his brain that are linked to his illness and we can see the 'abnormalities' or the causes of his skitzophrenia. (http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/03/28/fight-club) - Fight Club Opening Sequence

The film 'One Hour Photo' is based around a very lonely old man who works in a photo development store and he begins to 'stalk' or follow a family who regularly come into the store to have their photos developed. He doesn't want to hurt them or have relations with them he just wants to become a part of there family. Along the way he becomes more and more obsessed with them and starts to find the whole thing alot easier and more 'normal'. This character and storyline is perfect for inspiring ideas for our film being as the plot and main characters are very similar they are both obsessed with one set of people or one person and begin to take pictures of them and follow there lives intensely. We will try to include mainly the character behaviours and characteristic of the stalker in this film into the one in ours and create a realistic effect of a stalker.
I couldn't find the opening sequence for this film so instead I had to analyse the trailer and clips off of YouTube. In the trailer we get to see both sides of the stalker in this film first off we see the nice friendly side of him and you would at a first glance assume he is an ordinary old man but then we are shown the 'stalker' side of him and he begins to get angry, stranger and shows alot of abnormal behaviour I would like to show a small amount of both of these behaviours in our film so that the audience can tell he is strange or a little weird simply from his characteristics. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjIBX5RrG4Q) - One Hour Photo Trailer


The film 'The Butterfly Effect' is based around a character who has a mental illness that causes him to black out for a few minutes and then we he comes back round to normality he has no idea what he has just done and sometimes he is even unaware of where he is. The main character in this film is not as similar to our film as the other two movies however the editing and camera angles are very bizarre and strange and I feel we could include some of these shots in our film. Also the effects used for when he blacks out might be use full to use something similar in our film when the stalker is taking pictures or starting to get a little more possessive.
The opening sequence to The Butterfly Effect is definitely used to grab the audiences attention and make them want more because the first scene in the film is also the last so we are immediately hit with all sorts of enigmas and questions that we want answering.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxgeH8InR9g) - The Butterfly Effect Opening Sequence (0:00 - 2:00)