Research: Key Conventions

In research of the Key conventions, we have watched several movie openings, we watched 'Search for a Mignight Kiss', 'Brick', 'London to Brighton', 'Shifty', and 'Kick Ass', as we watched we wrote notes on the conventions of an opening to help for a later date.

One of the main points of the opening credits is to introduce us to the main cast and the crew, very often including the genre of the film, for example, in Kickass the Main Character voiced over and we could see somebody attempting to be a superhero, to set in motion what the film would be about, it also shows us how the narrative may work out, that we may have a narrator at points and that it should be fairly linear, as we're starting from before he became a Superhero, we also find out about Dave, and how he explains himself it shows that he is deprived of female attention and that it is nearly constantly on his mind, it is probably the main thing he talks about in the sequence, its a key convention that the film tells us about the character, even if its something his everyday friends don't know, we will.

Obviously, there is always the 'credits' of people involved in the film, very often shown in simple text in white, to make it stand out and easy to read, it shows the Production companies, the direction, the key actor, and sometimes even editors, costume designed, etc, but this is rarer occurance.

Opening sequences can often use enigma codes, which is show in Brick to make us, the audience question what is happening, much like an ellipsis, we don't know what's happened and we want to find out, how is this girl injured?. The sequences often introduce key aspects to the characters' personality when showing the main character, in 'Brighton to London' it makes it clear just how desperate the two characters are, that the mother has to sell her body to a man just to make enough money for a train fare, it tells us about them, we will already have ideas about them.

Of course, at some stage in the title sequence there will always say the title of the film, for example, in Kickass, the camera moves to the back of the Taxi, showing the licence plate as 'Kick Ass', this introduces the film to us and in Brick it has a very simple, white lettering on a black background.

There is often some kind of non-diegetic music within the start up sequence to show the flow of the film and often helping us with the genre of the film, in an example in the film Juno, when the rather spacey, bubbly music comes on, it shows that it's probably going to have lots of light hearted moments and the lyrics hint at a romantic comedy, it influences on the main characters personality, showing us about how she might be, still rather childish inside. We wouldn't use a heavy metal song for a romantic comedy, it just wouldn't fit, it's supposed to set the scene, it'd give completely wrong ideas about what the film would be.