Inspirational Opening Sequence Analysis

Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny

In Tenacious D The Pick of Destiny the song ‘Kickapoo’ is played throughout the opening scene. The opening scene is effectively telling the viewer about the backstory behind the main plot, about how one of the main characters, Jables, ended up in Hollywood. It begins with an establishing shot of a house with subtitles telling us that it’s in the town of Kickapoo, Missouri. It cuts from different camera angles rather quickly in the first part of the intro where it shows us his family sat around the table but Jables is nowhere to be seen. A pan of music posters, upstairs in Jables’ room, shows bands that would seem rebellious to a Christian family.  Jables jumps out behind a wall downstairs. The camera pans to him and a spotlight is put on him as he plays to his family. Many close ups and medium close ups are used to show his families reactions to his music. His father stands up, drags Jables out of the room. Whilst being whipped with his fathers belt, the music stops and you hear him whining. The music then has a change of tempo as his father grounds him for what he’s done.

KickAss

Starts with an establishing shot of the city with background music playing as the camera pans down. A voiceover of the main character starts as the camera pans further down and a character in a superhero costume comes into view. The camera then starts moving towards the character, getting closer and closer then finally being above them, with a bird’s eye view of the drop from the building. This is done with a crane shot to get all the angles used. A low angle shot from street view to show where the character is. A few wide/medium shots of people staring up. A close up of the characters face. A bird’s eye shot of the street below. A close up again and then switching back to a bird’s eye view of the character falling from the building. Low angle and medium shots of people applauding as the character falls to the ground. Long/medium shot of the character falling, pov shot falling towards the earth. Medium shot with pan as he crashes into a car. Wide shot shows peoples reactions. As this happens, the dramatic music stops and new music starts playing. A tracking shot with pan shows the character lying on the car as the voice over continues. It ends with a close up of the license plate KICK-ASS.

Horror Audience Research

Se7en Clip Analysis

The first shot – medium long shot – shows where the characters are and where the scene is being set, shows brad pitt walking through the door into a room where morgan freeman is sat and the camera slowly zooms in

Second shot – medium shot – shows Morgan freeman moving away from his desk whilst talking to pitt who isn’t in the shot

Third shot – close up – close up of the cheat sheets pitt used in the film

Fourth shot - medium shot – pans vertically, following pitt as he sits down, showing the emotions in his face

Fifth shot – multiple shot reverse shots between the two characters showing conversation/awkward silence, medium shot/medium close up of each character

Sixth shot – high angle medium close up - showing his body language and making the character seem less powerful form the angle

Prelim Evaluation

In our prelim task, we had to create a film that lasted no longer and no less than 60 seconds. The film could be any genre that we wanted and had to follow set rules such as the 180 rule. The film had involve filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, which whom she/he exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue.

The plot of our film was of a man, whose name isn’t told in the story, who has made a deal with the mafia and has tried to get away but get kidnapped by them. He wakes up in a storage room and is confronted by the boss of the mafia gang.

The first thing our group did was plan the film on a story board, which ended up being 3 pages long. This included a short sentence or two describing what happened in the shot and a small diagram depicting what we aimed to be able to shoot. In our story board, we noted down which camera angles would be used in each shot. For example, to show conversation between the two characters in our story we used a shot reverse shot.

We found finding a setting for our movie rather easy as all we needed was an empty room to film. Background noise was a problem however as we recorded part of our film in a music practice room and other parts in open areas where there was a lot of noise. We managed to edit out the sound when it came to editing the whole movie. One thing we could have added while we were editing was possibly a backing track before the characters meet each other.

Overall, i think our final product was successful especially for our first time recording and editing.