Film Censorship

Please click onto the powerpoint presentation below: History of British Film Censorship

Film production and distribution research

Dreamworks Studios

DreamWorks was founded 12 October, 1994DreamWorks was founded 12 October, 1994 in Universal City, California. DreamWorks has three founders; Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenburg and David Geffen. DreamWorks has six current divisions: DreamWorks Animation, DreamWorks Live Theatrical Productions, DreamWorks Movie Networks, DWKids.com, DreamWorks Television and DreamWorks Home Entertainment. DreamWorks both produce and distribute films, and produced three Oscar winning films: American Beauty, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. DreamWorks highest grossing film is currently Transformers: Dark Side Of The Moon. DreamWorks are famed for releasing family/animation films.

20^th Century Fox

Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck founded 20^th Century Fox May 31st, 1935. It is currently situated in the Century City area of Los Angeles. 20th Century Fox is a subsidiary of News Corporation, owned by Rupert Murdoch. 20th Century Fox also produces and distributes films. They have an association with producing and distributing sci-fi films. They produced Avatar and Star Wars. Avatar was 20th Century Fox's highest grossing film and also the highest grossing film of all time. 

Working Title

Two producers founded working Title: Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe.  The headquarters of Working Title are located in London, United Kingdom. Working title is a subsidiary of Universal that produces films mainly in the UK. Working Title is mainly focused on production but also distributes, they are renowned for producing light-hearted comedies. Their highest grossing film is Bridget Jones’ Diary, making over 280 million pounds.

Universal Studios

Carl Laemmie, Pat Powers, Mark Dintenfass, William Swanson, David Horsley, Adam Kessel, Charles Baumann and Jules Brulatour founded Universal Pictures on the 30th April 1912. The headquarters of Universal Studios are located in Universal City, California. Universal Studios are a division of NBCUniversal and a subsidiary of Comcast. Universal is a production and distribution companies that focuses on producing comedies and establishes franchises from films.

Lionsgate Films

Lionsgate was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia on January 12, 1998 and now headquartered Santa Monica, California, United States.  Lionsgate’s founder is Frank Giustra. Lionsgate is a distributing company. They began a trend of distributing films that were deemed too controversial for other American institutes. The studio’s highest grossing film was The Hunger Games. Lionsgate is also famed for rarely co-producing films with other major studios.

Mean Streets (1973) — Art of the Title

To view the opening title sequence of Mean Streets; please click the link below:
Mean Streets (1973) — Art of the Title

The film begins with the logo and name of the production company, which is in this particular film, was the parent company of Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Music Group; Warner Communications company. As the production company allows films to change the colour of the background and the logo itself to relate to the film. Therefore; the hue bright red connotes blood, love and rage, whereas, this deeper, darker red connotes power and lust.

The opening title sequence begins with a voice over from the director; Martin Scorsese. This technical code helps to illustrate the tone of film and the major themes. Scorsese begins with "You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home", this reveals to the audience that religion and life on the "streets" conflict with each other and that the protagonist will experience some form of moral dilemma. The life on the streets itself connotes danger, possible gangster/mafia activity and the character's association with a mafia, or, possibly him trying to escape from the mafia.

Scorsese uses diegetic sound of the protagonist, Charlie, shuffling through his bedroom. The use of diegetic gives the film verismilitude and the sound of police sirens tells the audience Charlie lives in an area where crime is frequent and the police patrol the streets; this relates back to the title Mean Streets. Charlie's blase attitude to the police sirens shows that Charlie is accustomed to the noise of sirens.

Scorsese uses match-on-action of Charlie lying in bed and resting his bed on a pillow. However the cutting between shots is delayed by 0.5 seconds so it gives the sequence a feel of repetition of Charlie resting his head on a pillow, but between every cut on the match-on-action closes in on Charlie's face, moving from a close-up to an XCU.

Scorsese then uses The Ronettes - Be My Baby as a sound bridge to the actual title opening sequence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-0upHlWfQ4

The production teams credits are overlaid in front of a film projector, this is clever as the object (projector) is commonly associated with the roles of the director and producers.

This image below names the production company (distributors). It also informs the public and other production companies that the rights to this film (art); Mean Streets are exclusively's Warner Bros. Studios. The cinematographer used a grainy yellow/green filter so it appears this sequence was actually shown from a projector, but also it makes the image of the streets look dirty, again tying the image back to the title. It also helps set the location for the audience, as they can now clearly see the film was hot in New York. The text for the title of Mean Streets is placed over the image in bright red emphasizing the genre of the film.

In regards to crediting the actors, the names are placed around the action taking place. This shows the resourcefulness of the editing team as they understood the limitations of a film projector (the action may not fill the whole screen, so you're left with darkness around the shots) and turned the limitations into advantages.

Explanation of the 180 degree rule

This rule is usually applied when showing a conversation between two characters.

Once you establish the positions of two characters in a scene, for instance; if two characters are having a conversation at a table and say if the male is on the right and the female is on the left,  you have now established the 180 degree rule.

Here we can clearly see the woman is positioned on the right and the man is positioned on the left, so once the director cuts to an over-the-shoulder shot or a shot from the perspective of the character, and returns to the two-shot we expect to see the woman on the right and the man on the left of our screen.

As you can see from this over head shot above, the camera can only shoot from this side of the line, for the scene to adhere to the 180 degree rule.

Breaking the 180 degree rule

Now as you can see the director has placed two cameras either side of our imaginary line, violating the 180 degree rule as you will in the next few screenshots the effect of violating the 180 degree rule has on the consistency of storytelling.

Since the 180 degree rule has been broken both actors are facing the same direction breaking the continuity of the film, another downfall of violating the 180 degree rule is that the actors' eye lines  won't match, disorientating the audience.

Crossing the 180 degree line, not the 180 degree rule

For a director to cross the line and still remain in the perimeters if the 180 degree rule, the director must shoot the moment and use the clip in the edit where the camera crosses the 180 degree line to maintain continuity.

The Clues of Storytelling

I found this clip by Andrew Stanton on a website called www.ted.com

I thought it might be useful and utilise it for the group film opening. The clip is centred on story telling. Stanton makes the point that the audience "wants to work for their meal", meaning, the audience wants to deduce and become a detective for the film.

The clip also stresses the importance of the writers "liking" their characters and the whole journey a characters, meaning there must be a change from the starting point and the ending point.

Even in the opening sequence, if Fatima, Tanisha, Indiya and I are able to to start a story where the opening scene presents enigma codes as to what the films about or relate ourselves with the audience. To communicate with them.







 

Introduction to the Brief

Today we had an introduction to the brief of our main coursework task. We went through what our coursework entails.

Main Coursework Task: Create a title and opening sequence for an upcoming fictional film. The film must not last longer than two minutes.

Since hearing the news, my imagination has been running wild. But, despite my eagerness, I am curious to find out the key features of an opening sequence and how to bring my thoughts onto screen. I have to control myself and think realistically and understand the restrictions I face; such as budgetary restrictions.

I'm watching films and studying certain techniques to incorporate in my opening sequence, problem is, I don't know which genre I want to film. I essentially have no start, no beginning. 
I need actors as well, professional actors. 

Anyway...

Preliminary Task

For our preliminary task we had to create a scene for a fictional film that lasts for a maximum of two minutes.  We had to follow a set of requirements that the film must conform to: 

• The film must have Shot, reverse Shot.
• A minimum of five lines of dialogue.
• Must include Match on action.
• A character must walk through the door, sit down at a table and a conversation to ensue.
• Must abide by the 180 degree rule.
• Must last no longer than two minutes.

The Break Up Scene

Title Worksheet Analysis - Opening Sequence

Title Sequence Work Sheet

Codes and Conventions

Se7en Opening Credits

Codes: a device used in media text to establish a way of creating meaning.

Conventions: techniques associated with a certain genre within a media text.

Technical Codes and Conventions:

The editing production team used fast cuts to communicate to the audience they need to process a lot of information in a short space of time to understand the major themes of the film. The film also uses XCU on sharp objects; which is commonly associated with horror or thriller films, to communicate themes of death and violence.
We also see XCU of hands but never any other parts of the protagonist in the film.

The filter of a yellow- green colour connotes that the film has something to do with sickness, cowardice, discord and jealousy. It also has the conventions of a limited colour-palette, as the film is supposed to be seen in a certain way, removing confusion with the connotations.

The typography is looks like scribbles and rushed, this could connote the film has a sense  of urgency that is of major importance as it features throughout the film. (Example given below)













Verbal:
The camera has series of XCU on notes and highlights certain words such as transsexuals,  to set the tone of the film and images are relayed for emphasis. The film uses disturbing and harsh sounds such as; chalkboard scratchings and screams, typical of thrillers and horrors to unsettle the audience.

The music plays eerie music, to help set the tone and we hear one voice at the the end to give a lasting impression that stick with us; the voice cries "I want to be closer to God". This could be linked to one or more characters wanting to be closer to God and the theme of religion.

Symbolic:
We see blood spilled onto the page, this could be linked to theme of violence and murder. It also uses the colour red, a colour associated with blood, death and rage. We also images of mutilated bodies and corpses which links back to themes of death. 

Red can also be associated with lust, love and sexuality. Sexuality and gender is shown to be a prominent theme with XCU and slower cuts on words like "femininity" and "transsexuals" to show the importance of sexuality and gender is to the plot.

We see images of razors, this connotes criminal activity and the peeling of skin. Also, there are needles, an object associated with fear deviance and addition.



The film presents clearly and concisely the main themes of the film and expertly uses technology to help present the themes.