Research Task- A clockwork orange

Although a clockwork orange is a much older film, and therefore the effects used may be outdated and therefore not appropriate for my task, I still feel it is an effective opening. It starts with a red background and sinister non-diegetic music that instantly sets the tone. Red has connotations of passion and violence and this very subtly (and cleverly) hints at some kind of narrative to the film. The non-diegetic music then plays "music for the funeral of queen Mary'' by Henry Prucell, which is a very slow yet triumphant score.
The typography then appears on the screen (Ariel bold), and the whole shot then changes colour (blue screen), when a new sentence appears. This is very simple, however very effective in creating a sinister atmosphere.
Once the film title appears (on a red background again), the shot cuts to a close up of the main character. He's tilting his head and looking up, connoting a sinister character. The shot lasts a lot longer than generic shots in film openings, and although it is probably just a convention of the time it was filmed it I think it is a good way of making an audience feel uncomfortable, as you would wish to do when creating a thriller. The non-diegetic music still plays over this, and the camera soon starts to zoom out into an establishing shot of the bar the main protagonist and his 'gang' are in.
As the camera continues to zoom out a voice over of the main characters voice establishes both himself and the supporting characters around him as the main focus of the scene, and also introduces the beginnings of the narrative in a unique style that I think is again very unnerving for an audience as his voice and the way he is speaking is quite informal and friendly, and therefore juxtaposes how sinister he looks in the establishing shot.
The mis-en-scene of the establishing shot is slightly irrelevant as this particular film also comes under the genre of science fiction and therefore flamboyancy is expected. However, the characters in the bar barely move the whole way through the shot and are wearing very similar attire (white clothes and a hat). This creates further tension for the audience as you don't quite know if anything is going to happen suddenly or unexpectedly as the shot unconventionally keeps going and going. 

Research Task- Se7en.

This is the opening sequence for Se7en. The piece is a montage edit of lots of different close ups of bandaged, dirty hands putting together a scrap book of 'victims' (there are shots of polariods of people who have been significantly injured). The shots are all in low key lighting, which is a convention of the thriller genre. Non-diegetic music plays throughout the piece, in some places the music almost fits diegetically with the shots of the book being put together- however it is consistently slow tempo and gives the overall opening a tense mood that establishes the genre.
The typography is unique to the film and was designed by Kyle Cooper- the scratchy, scribbly writing is iconic of thriller and horror films. The text flickers across the screen in the same way the shots do, and in some cases are illegible until later on in the shot. The fast-paced editing of the text is a very effective contrast to the slow and eerie diegetic music and makes the opening as a whole seem unpredictable and therefore effective in establishing the genre of thriller.
No characters are established in this opening, however, I would assume that the close up of the dirty hands belong to someone who will, at the very least, be a key role to the narrative, if not the main protagonist or antagonist. The fact that the role of this character is left to be known to the audience is a very effective way of establishing the genre, as well as maintaining a level of interest for the rest of the film. 

Conventions of film openings- presentation

Conventions of film openings (AS media studies)

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Preliminary task and evaluation

This is our final product for the preliminary task. The process was one of which we learned a lot from, one of the main points being effective planning is of upmost importance when planning a project like this. Although we did draw up a storyboard and stuck to it quite strictly, it would have also been useful to note down how we were going to sort out the more technical aspects of our video, for example how we were going to keep the lighting and sound levels consistent throughout the video, especially as the filming took more than one day to complete. We had some issues with the settings on our camera, and as a result some of the colouring on the video is slightly distorted and not how we would like for it to be- this is something that we should have checked before the filming and therefore could have been prevented. It would also have been useful to do extra research into how to place a soundtrack onto a video effectively as we wasted quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to do this when we could have otherwise focused on further developing our editing skills.
Working in a team meant that the task got done much more quickly than executing the project individually, however there were differences in terms of editing styles and deciding on what the narrative of the project should be. This resulted in people having to compromise some of their ideas for the best interest of getting the whole project done, as well as this the deliberation took up some time that could have otherwise gone into filming and editing.
Overall we have produced a good final product and learned a lot about how to successfully plan, film, and edit a short piece of film and these skills will be useful when completing our final project.