Opening scene

I have started to look at films that open up with a voice over. The first movie i looked at was the movie

"21." The film is a fact-based story about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings. However it is the opening scene that i am most instrested in, the movie opens with a voice over of the main character before fading out into music and the opening credits.

The film American Beauty also uses a voice over at the start of the film, however this voice over is rather different, as it is narrated by the main character, who reveals that he is dead at the start of the film, i thought doing this was very risky, as you would think that telling somebody the end to a story at the start would ruin the film for them, however this dosnt, it makes you want to watch it more to find out what happened and what events led up to the main characters death.

Train Spotting is one of my favourite films of all time, it is about a character called Renton who is deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene and tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influences of friends. This voice over gives us a really good idea about Rentons personality and his attitude towards life and drugs, so while we havnt even seen more than 2 minutes of the film, we almost feel like we know Renton.

Rocknrolla has a another similar voice over to train spotting, again this film is about a young man who enjoys many taboos and this opening voice over helps give us an idea what he is like.

Opening Scenes

So i have started my DP2 film project.
A good beginning credit sequence is really all it takes for me to like a movie. That seems like a really stupid thing to say – but when you think about it, while not all good movies have creative credits, almost all creative credits belong to good movies. It shows that the filmmakers actually cared enough to do something meaningful with their title sequence as opposed to just throwing out some stock effect… After all, the beginning credits are the opening number to a film – the handshake – and if it doesn’t make you excited about what you’re about to watch then there really isn’t a point is there? 
So i have decided to post my personal favorite opening credit sequences.. 

The first film that comes to mind if Vertigo, while not one of my favorite films, the opening sequence to this film is instantly recognisable.  

You know you’re about to watch a suspenseful film when the opening title takes like a minute to fully appear. What I love about it is that we all know what the title is, we knew it when we decided to watch the movie – and yet it still teases us line by line. I know this is silly, but every time I see it I forget about the last two lines that appear in the E and the A – it surprises me every time because to me the title seems complete enough for my satisfaction, and also I have the memory of a tin can. I wanted to remind people of this title sequence mostly because it’s showed up again pretty recently in the trailer for Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s sort-of-not-really-but-close prequel to Alien. I think it was the inclusion of this title effect that really, really set me over the edge when I first saw that trailer.

Final Animation Movie

Evaluation of my animation.

I didn’t know what to expect when I looked at the brief for the first time, but I instantly knew that I would want to design the lair of a super hero rather than a super villain, super villains always tend to be a lot more exciting and are always very controversial, the fact that a super villain does not have any rules or regulations, means that they can do much more than a super hero, I thought this would also mean they might have a more exciting lair, as they may have things in the lair that a super hero might not, such as weapons to a certain degree.

So I knew I wanted a super villain, and after watching hell boy recently I loved the idea of having a Nazi scientist that was part machine in the present day, so hell boy was a massive influence on me, however I found the actual characteristic of the villain in hell boy rather dull, he just looked like a normal member of the SS with a grey mask on, which wasn’t for me, I wanted my villain to literally scream ‘evil’ so I began looking around for more influences, probably one of my favourite character designs of all time was to be general grievous from star wars, he was also one a man, or some sort of living creature, that’s life was now been supported by machine, however I felt his design was not right for this project, he looked to futuristic, and to ‘droid’ like, so then I finally came across some batman animation from 1992, and I loved the design that mr freeze had, and I knew I wanted my super villain to look like this version of mr freeze.

As for my lair, I knew I wanted this to be set in the present day, or near future, so that I could incorporate modern technology, such as the submarine and helicopter, however this wouldn’t tie in to my Nazi scientist if it were any normal lair, so I decided to have my lair built deep underground with access only by helicopter via the helicopter pad, or the submarine dock inside the lair. I had many great and wild plans for my lair, however I have never used 3ds max before, and when I actually came down to start making my lair, I was finding it extremely difficult to even make a wall, so I soon realised some of my ideas weren’t going to be possible at this stage of my course, however now that I have finished dp2, I can look back at my initial ideas and think how I could perhaps do some of them now that I have a moderate understanding of the huge program. I was finding it very difficult to learn the program at first, and was getting extremely frustrated as I knew what I wanted my lair to look like, but I just didn’t know how to get there, however using the tutorials on the NOW and on YouTube, they helped me understand the basics of the program and I am now able to carry myself thru the program and start to learn it at a more in-depth level.

Animation DP2 first Rooms

Today i started to create the room for the submarine section of my base, i am yet to design the submarine its self, however the idea is that the room is underground, with a water section leading to the sea, in which the submarine can get to and from the base. i created the water illusion by applying animated noise to my glass texture.