Sex And the City Title Sequence Analysis.

http://vimeo.com/13280228

Sex and the city is the typical romantic comedy. The film is targeted at 15 year old's and older. It is directed and written by Michael Patrick King and produced by Richard Brener.The title sequence had a lot of expectations to live up to as there had already been several series out and is a very popular show, so I am going to analyse the sequence to see how it has been portrayed.

The sequence begins with sound. A hip hop beat is used and gets you in the mood for glam when the saxophone piece is played on top of the beat. The song is called 'Labels or Love' and is by Fergie who as well as the Sex and the city girls is a famous women who other women aspire to. Whilst the sequence is playing, the main character does the voice over and tells us the background story and introduces each character. This is the hermeneutic code and is where we are kept in suspense as to what will happen in the film when we are introduced. She tells us that the reason everyone goes to New York is to look for labels or love, so here we see a relation with the song choice. Also, the dream of going to New York to shop is a dream that is dominently linked to women.

The cinematography and editing used is very professional looking but that is what you would expect with a massive film. There are lots of zooms and reverse zooms of New York and it's skyline as well as plenty of establishing shots and Ariel shots, not one of these are the same which keeps you watching. Also there are many different angles used and are also slightly different which make it appealing to the eye. Black curved borders are used in the corners for the cast and crews name, it looks very glam and stylish, similar to the outfits we see the characters in.

This sequence is full of mise en scene, this is the life every girl wants. The film is based in Manhattan, one of New York's richest places. All the clothes worn by the characters are designer and to die for, this is the look that women aspire to and the film is a big influence to the way some women live there life. It really wouldn't matter what the cast were wearing, people would still be inspired by their quality of life and how they are lucky to be four best friends that are really close. Also the friendship and the labels and love quote are things all women can relate to.

Lots of transitions are used when flicking between the different shot, this keeps it fresh looking and not repetitive. Plenty of wipes and fade ins are used but also screen splits when multiple characters are being described. The black curved lines are cold and easy on the eye which makes the sequence enjoyable to watch. Also the bright diamond pink theme which is used for the title contrasts and sparkles well against the plain black background. This feminine theme runs throughout the title sequence and the film and helps reflect the wide target audience.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist Analysis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hkEYQiyO7A

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) is a romantic comedy film directed by Peter Sollett. It stars Michael Cera and Kat Dennings. I am going to analyse the films title sequence to see how the film presents it's title. The names of the cast and crew appear throughout this sequence in a cartoony, bold, bubble style.

The title sequence starts in Nick's room panning around his bedroom wall where we see a collage of photos and drawings of himself and his ex girlfriend. This refers to his artistic ways and how he likes to present them. This is also how many other teens display their fond memories and how teens in general are dominantly portrayed. Whilst all of this is happening the Producers and Directors names appear in a bold, yellow capitalised font, which moves. The music in the background is a beaty Alternative/Indie song which goes along with the panning of the room. it is by Devendra Banhart and is called Lover, the first lyrics are 'Well I-I, I wanna be your lover, I wanna be your man'. This song and the pictures of Nick and his ex already show us that there is going to be lots of romance throughout the film.

Mise en scene is seen throughout the sequence but only slightly as we aren't introduced to any characters until nearer the end. From the animations we can see that the characters are passionate about music as many band names appear on the wall and are all in different colours and fonts portraying that the characters are into there music as well as art. We also see the title of the film appear onto a CD. When we get to the end of the sequence and start of the film we see that the setting of the film is in a typical American school, the bell has just rung for the end of the lesson and Norah's walks out of her class with headphones on listening to music, she then meets up with her friend. At this point we can not get a very detailed description of the characters as they are all in uniform but we can see that Norah is a distant character compared to her friend who comes across very loud and bubbly. Also, the way hair and make up has been used on Nora to make her seem not a typical, or dominent representation of a hich school teen.

At the start of the sequence we see lots of panning across the wall with several focus pulls on images of importance. This is done with a steadicam and using a track and dolly to get a good quality shot. At this point the shots are all real but the panning slowly turns from the wall to a notepad and this is where it turns to animated images. This sequence uses a lot of post production effects. A feature in the sequence is where the title moves from a square to a circle which is then wiped off the screen by a ticking clock moving around it and to the beat of the song. This is all animation put onto a real background which has a shallow focus and is of Nick's desk. The animated clock is then superimposed onto the school clock as the bell goes.

Evaluation.

Since starting our media course we have been carrying out a series of tasks as part of our continuity project. For the final task we had to put together a short film to show what we had learnt in terms of shots and techniques by making sure to include match on action, cut in, cut out, 180 degree rule and shot/reverse shot.

We had to make a story board with still shots of cuts so that we had a plan of what we were going to be filming. This helped our group a lot as we had made some errors in the still photos that we were then able to correct when filming. The filming went really well and we completed in a short amount of time, we all took turns at filming but it was only Zoe and Emily acting. When we thought it was 'a wrap' we took our camera and plugged it into the computer to transfer the film to the Adobe programme for editing. None of us had used the programme before so it was a bit of trial and error before we finally got the hang of it and uploaded our film shot by shot ready to edit. We then clicked and dragged the selected shots and made them shorter and cut them so that they looked smooth and professional using match on action techniques.

When it came to adding the cut in we realised that we had filmed a zoom in instead. This was quite a problem and took a lot of changing and re arranging to try and make it a cut in, we even had to use silent clips from other shots to fill in the zooming parts! Even with this the picture was not long enough for the audio so in the final thin part of the audio is cut but we don't mind as we have included everything that was originally asked for from the task. If we were to redo the task or had more time we would have re filmed the shot so that nothing was cut and it was more professional looking. After completing the editing we uploaded the video to YouTube and linked it to our blog. We learnt a lot of information about filming and editing as well as time control! We will certainly take our knowledge from this project and use it wisely on the next!

Post Production.

I think that the editing of our task went really well seeing as we have never done anything like it before! It was quite easy organising the shots and cutting them down so that it all flowed well. We had a bit of trouble when editing the cut in as we had actually done a zoom. but we managed to sort it all , there is still a little bit of audio missing but overall it looks good.

Preliminary Production Video.

Health And Safety Audit.

When filming we need to be aware of the following things; slamming fingers in the door so this means extra care and no mucking around, making sure there aren't sharp and dangerous objects in the filming area, hot drinks should not be drunk around electrical equipment in case of spillages or burns and put all cases for equipment out of the way so there is no tripping. Tripod legs should be made aware of. Yellow safety warning signs could be used to prevent tripping over tripod.
We need to take extra care and concern preventing injuries, creating a good and safe working environment. All of the above could result in serious injury and should be taken seriously.

Storyboard.

Here is my groups story board showing the main shots.