Real life drama opening sequence studied  

Ill Manors

Ill Manors opening sequence starts out with a close up of young man, this quickly moves onto an over the shoulder shot of him watching TV. After this slow start to an opening an narrator (plan B) starts to talk. Establishing shot is used to let the audience know where the film is set. Rap music starts, held image of town is on camera, were we can see the whole town moving around. Quickly moves onto a number of different characters in the film. Still spend up they get on with their very day life, which involves drugs, prostitution and violence. This sped up opening sequence allows the audience to get to know very quickly who the characters are in the film, it also allows them to see what the film is about. Basic font used for names, but goes along with urban and industrial film.

For our opening sequence I would use some of these ideas. I believe the speeded up effect would allow our audience to quickly relate to our character and would allow them to see quickly what he would get up to on a normal day. I believe it is very important to establish the genre of the film and to let the audience know what the film involves. I also feel that the font used would fit in well with our opening sequence, as it keeps the ‘South London’ feel to it, and does not have any other look than simple and basic. Ill Manors does this very well, I think it would be key to take some of the ideas used in this and add it to our opening sequence. 

 

 

This Is England

Opening sequence is short clips of old snippets of the news in the 1970s, It shows riot scenes, it shows protested scenes and other different clips from the news. All the way from the beginning there is an upbeat reggae song. The song has been placed over clips which show sad or even shocking scenes. The reason for this is to show the view of the characters in the film and what they thought of the events happening. It shows that the characters were happy to be involved in the riots and protests and that they believed they were a good thing. The other point the title sequence tries to get across is the staleness of the time period this film was set in. Even the architecture was dull at this time and the opening sequence also shows this.

There is not much to get from this opening sequence, because it is impossible to us news clips of any event because of copyright (even though I would have liked to). But i have had a few ideas from this opening sequence. The first would be the music and how this would change the mood of what is being watched. Almost like an oxymoron, in which sad or disturbing events are being shown on screen but the music being played has an upbeat feel. The other idea i got form this would be reflecting a boring life style or place by what is being shown on screen. This could be done by including tracking shots or mid shots of doll urban places e.g. flats and other buildings. These are just ideas at the moment though.