'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' title sequence timeline

 

A few weeks ago we was asked to make a title sequence timeline in lesson, however when doing this in class I begun recording the timeline for the ending credits to a film from Artofthetitle. I am now doing a basic one on a film selected on my survey so the timeline could perhaps be an influence to my title sequence. The film I choice was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I found the trailer slightly similar to SE7EN due to how dark it was. I like how all the onscreen was in black and white apart from specific things such as fire. I definitely want to fully analysis this piece of work to use as influence towards my title sequence. The sequence is simple but also effective due to the use of colour which we could take into interest when making our own.
This is my basic timeline of the text on screen:

  

 

 

0:00:00

 

0:00:08

Production companies

 

0:00:17

The names of the main cast in the film

 

0:00:22

The title of the film

 

00:00:26

Other significant actors/actresses names

 

00:01:15

Casting by

 

00:01:20

Costume designer

 

00:01:23

Co-producers

 

00.01:26

Sound design

 

00:01:29

Music by

 

00:01:31

Editors

 

00:01:34

Production designer

 

00:01:37

Director of photography

 

00:01:46

Executive producers

 

00:01:50

Produced by

 

00:01:53

Based on book by / originally published by

 

00:02:09

Screenplay by

 

00:02:21

Directed by

 

NO MORE CREDITS FROM THIS POINT

 

00.02.34

Title Sequence ends

 

I think this is a suitable timeline for my group's title sequence, although the title sequence is too long but could be shortened down for us because of our lack of actors/actresses in it. Our title sequences needs to be no longer than 2 minutes but this title sequence went through a significant amount of actors and juxtaposed fast pace cuts with slower ones to create dramatic suspense.



Results on SurveyMonkey

 After gathering 15 responses to my survey, I decided to check out the results:

The most popular movie genre is Horror, Action and Thriller. I was happy with this reply from the most common target audience of 14-17 because these 3 genres fit into our film idea the most. It would have been more interesting if somebody enjoyed Sci-fi a lot as Sci-fi contains supernatural events.

 

The most popular reason to go to the cinema was advertisement and a friend recommending a film, that was expected due to the amount of young people taking the survey. Stars in the film was quite close behind, I expected this to be higher as teenagers / young adults tend to have actor / actress crushes, I suppose older adults have a preference to films with the types of films an actor does. Reviews was only chosen once which was expected because reviews are usually posted in more adult magazines and newpapers compared to what the age range of the people in the survey would read.

 

 

The most popular plot theme in a Thriller film was quite a mixture, excluding supernatural events which I didn't mind because supernatural events is not going to be in our film. Deceptive mind games and Crime / Detective was the most popular answer, I was happy about this because Deceptive mind games is sort of included in our film, Chase / Stalking is also included in our film idea but thankfully that was the third most picked. Our film has a plot with a twist ending which is 4th most picked in joint place with Demolishing another's mental state. I picked these questions because these are the common themes I found when researching the codes and conventions of Thriller genre.

 

 

The most seen film was Saw in our survey, which doesn't really fit into our film idea and Saw is noticed as Horror film more than a Thriller. The most next popular is Taken which falls under Chase / Stalking. SE7EN, Shutter island, Alien were all in 3rd place which I was happy about because SE7EN and Shutter Island fit into our film idea the most. I was surprised by the amount of films that people have seen as Thriller is not stereotyped as a genre teenagers / young adults would openly say they enjoy. 

 

 

Overall, I think my survey was effective for my coursework because I was surprised by some of the responses I got, for example the amount of people who picked Thriller as their favourite genre and the amount of people who have seen the selected Thriller films.

Audience Profile

Age: 15-20
Gender: Male/Female
Race: British
Education: Higher Education
Occupation: Retail shop assistant / Student
Annual Income: £00000-15000
Disposable Income: £300

Current lifestyle / culture: Experimental

Media Interests: Blogging / Social networking
Buying Habits: Fashion
Loyalty to Brands: Fred Perry / Ralph Lauren /

Demographics: B / D / E
Psychographics: Aspirers / Explorers

Likes: Cinema, Magazines, Twitter, Shopping, Mcdonalds, Dominos, Topshop/man, Friends, Eastenders, Skins, Subway, Late nights, Nandos, Mountain Dew, Reality TV, Photography, Makeup, Chocolate.

Dislikes: Queuing, Emmerdale, Smoking, Waking up early, Diet fizzy drinks, Bad weather, Sports.

I decided my age of my target audience from my survey I posted last week. The most picked age was 14-17 and 3 people also picked 18-20. Between those ages people tend to not own that much income due to still being in education. I picked the target audience to be male or female due to Thriller/Horror genres usually pull in both genres as teenagers are keen to see these films with groups of friends. I don't think our film would be targeted at a certain race but I put British as the film will be a British film.

Young adults / teenagers are stereotyped for following the trend in the social media, social medias such as twitter and tumblr etc. Through these social network websites they will discover popular brands such as Fred Perry being trendy.

 

However, for demographics I decided to add in B because teachers / people working with the media and arts such as graphics design may be interested in seeing the film and be frequent cinema goers. I choice Aspirers and Explorers for my psychographics as they are the most common psychographics for teenagers and young adults.

 

I picked my Likes/Dislikes from myself and other people I know as I fit into the target audience.

Roland Bartes' Enigma Code

In lesson on Friday we discussed Roland Barthes' enigma code theory.

Roland Barthes was born in 1915 and died in 1980 at the age of 64. Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic and semiotican (the study of cultural signs and symbols).
According to the enigma code, there is more than one way to read text, to uncover a text's plural meaning you have to read the text, then re-read it and everytime time you read it you reveal another meaning within the text.

"A galaxy of signifers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the code it mobilises extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable. The systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language" - Roland Barthes

Barthes' theory of the five codes is a way of grouping them according to the role they play in the team

The five codes are:

• The Hermeneutic code - the voice of truth
• The Proairetic code - the voice of empirics
• The Semantic code - the voice of the person
• The Symbolic code - the voice of the symbol
• The Cultural code - the voice of knowledge

Hermeneautic code is the way the story avoids telling the truth or revealing all the facts which allows the text to drop clues throughout and to keep the text a mystery to the readers.

Proairetic code is how tension is built up and the readers become eager to guess what is going to happen next.

Semantic code points to any element in a text that suggests a certain or additional meaning which the text suggests.

Symbolic code is similar to the semantic code but organises the semantic meanings into deeper sets of meaning. This leads to new meaning coming from opposing and conflicting ideas.

Cultural code is when the readers looks into wilder knowledge of morality and ideology.

Remembering these code's in mind apparently make text easier to understand and break down all text more clearly for people. This theory can also be used upon title sequences aswell, the way sequences can drop in sly hints which the audience can most likely pick up from watching more than once, for example the 'Catch me if you can' title sequence includes the whole film plot within the sequence, however the audience does not realise this immediately due to the distraction of the animation, sound and the text appearing on the screen.

Re-done brainstorm of our first title sequence ideas

I re-made the brainstorm we made in lesson on Bubblu.us as I liked the way our other brainstorm came out on this website, writing it out on an online brainstorm maker makes it a lot more clearer and it was nice to refresh my mind on the ideas we've made.

Journal

In Friday's lesson we begun to plan out our title sequence for our film. We spoke about:

• Distributor and Production Company
• Style
• Camerawork
• Genre
• Style and Editing
• Text on screen
• Narrative
• Setting
• Make-up and props
• Characters
• Sound

We started this brainstorm by starting with 'STINCS'

Setting - Theme - Iconography - Narrative - Characters - Style

After doing so we decided to look into other stuff to conclude as a group together. We then did some research on 'Kidnapping vs Medicine'. We thought we should use needles as they can represent illegal drugs to knock somebody out but they can only be used to cure someone from a deadly illness.

We started looking at restraining tools such as handcuffs and perhaps ropes.

From this point we decided to maybe consider setting this back to around the 1960s when mental illness was treated differently and more horrific. We started researching how schizophrenia was treated before people had prescripted drugs. We found out about prefrontal leucotomy, when doctors used to remove the part of the brain that released emotions. From looking at this we begun to think setting our film would fall too much into the horror genre as it is quite gory and a horrible thing to think about.

I feel as if this lesson was a massive jump for our title sequence ideas, I feel more confident with making the sequence and feel like it can work really well.

Kyle Cooper

As my group did a group analysis of the title sequence SE7EN, I decided to look at the creator of the sequence, Kyle Cooper.

Kyle Cooper was born in 1962 and went to Yale University to gain a degree in Graphics Design. Cooper founded the creative agency 'Prologue'. Prologue initially located in Malibu, moved to offices in Venice Beach in Los Angeles in 2008 due to his success.

Kyle's biggest piece of work was the SE7EN title sequence which made him gain a lot of work after this 1995 film.

He has done the title sequences for films such as:

• The Mummy (1999)
• Spiderman (2002)
• Dawn of the Dead (2004)
• Superman Returns (2006)
• Ironman (2008)
• Sherlock Holmes (2009)

From this it seems that Cooper grew a taste in creating the title sequences for Superhero / Marvel Films.

Cooper also did title sequences for TV shows such as:

• The Walking Dead
• American Horror Story

I think Kyle Cooper is more of an influence for our group than Saul Bass' title sequences are. Cooper's title sequence are more modern and fit better with Thriller, Action and Horror films when looking at the work that he's done.