Roughcut analysis & improvements

In our rough cut we tried to create the character of the "nerd" and his love interest. We tried to show his geeky lifestyle and home life. We did this by trying to display his passion for poetry and his obsession with the matrix. We tried to include slapstick moments where anything he does happens to go wrong, always with embarrassment included.
However our rough cut appeared to be more of a scene rather than an opening so we discussed how to improve it and to make it more abstract we have filmed lots of close ups of poetry books, him writing, poetry books in a library, his magician tricks in his bag and his leather 'matrix' coat.
We are also going to film some shots of the geek in a public area unaware of embarassing himself e.g. chasing pigeons, doing his matrix enactments jumping behind trees etc.

Cast list

A Just My Duck production
A Cybernet film
Donald Murphy
Richard Hammer
Lucy Spoonfield
Costume design by Pier Coupe
Art Direction by Steven Backster
production design by Liam Wilkinson
Casting by Emma Broad
Film Editing by Rachel Smith
Cinematography by Bill Trever
Original Music by Dan Manials
Produced by Edward Cress
Directed by Jude French

Having looked on the website "The art of the title sequence" we thought this opening had a lot of the features that we wanted to use in our opening sequence. For instance the idea of obsession is represented well with the main character applying his life to numbers whereas our main character applies his life to the girl he loves and his poetry. Also watching the day to day life of the character is the main theme of our idea and we liked how the director has represented this in "Stranger than fiction". Another factor is the isolation of the main character living his life with nothing but the object i.e. the watch and the notebook.

Anamatic

First ideas

When we were thinking of ideas for the title sequence we first thought of the initial idea involving a 'geek' and 'miss popular'. We also thought about involving many different peoples stories and starting the film with the end result showing happy couples but then going back a year and indicating the awkwardness and slapstick comedies of how it all began.
We then thought to involve more of a storyline and base the opening on one character - a typical nerd guy. He has a quirky obsession with writing poetry and has a crush on the popular girl in school but whenever he encounters her something goes wrong. We will put this onto a storyboard as a guideline for when we shoot the footage.
Another idea is for one of his funny accidents-i.e hits his head could trigger some kind of super power in him.

Intial Ideas

We came up with a range of ideas for the different genres given. Here are some of the first ideas we came up with:

Supernatural- Ghosts, zombies, people hunted by ghosts.

Adventure- Group of kids, Making up make believe, very innocent and young.

Real Life- Home life, rougher areas versus richer areas.

Rom com - Build up of character or location, gay boyfriend, poking fun at the genre, college location

Thriller- teen thriller, scary movie style,

Making the logo

We decided to take an approach of humor in making the logo. We liked the idea of using the iconic image/idea of a rubber duck and played with the phrase "Just my luck" and twisted the phrase as "Just my duck". Our first idea for a logo was to show a rubber duck with an enormous shark behind it and for the shark to engulf the duck but this proved to be too challenging to accomplish in animation. We then went with an idea of a rubber duck falling off of a waterfall.

james bond opening titles

Editing: Was very unusual and abstract composure. Blended from animation to real. A sequence of a continuously rolling animation scrolling over various shots of animated action. Symbolism of cards used e.g. diamond in the man instead of bullet.
Camerawork: Match on action at start- picks up gun and you see a man go to shoot at him- quickly turns around and shoots at cameraview - the traditional James Bond gun barrel appears with him in center and freezes- blood appears to run down the screen.
Sound: The James Bond casino royale theme tune starts up and continues loudly throughout the opening.
Mise-en-scene: Public toilets - all white - contrasts with black tuxedo and red "blood" that runs down screen. Gun laying on floor with James Bond leaning down to pick it up.
Titles: Titles fade in and out in amongst the action happening across the animation. Simple white writing.