Researching into opening credits

 I am close to finishing shooting and including all of the raw footage into one file in my computer. Today in the afternoon I will be recording my final scenes for my short film, with my dad and revising them. I am excited to be actually done with recording and send all of my hard work to get into its finishing touches. But, at the moment, I currently cannot record or advance with any other aspect of my film which makes me nervous, I want to advance with other aspects while I have time. Then, I saw another part that could technically count as a part of the recording or raw footage, which are the opening credits. Since I want to know how different pieces within my genre, psychological realism, include it as well as having my own creative liberties to design them.

First, I wanted to see how others within my genre have decided to create their own opening sequences. For example, a film that I examined earlier was "Gone Girl", which had a lot of elements that helped me in creating and adapting certain parts of my script. It is interesting to note that this shot sequence is about almost the same length that I need for my short film, which also shows me what I can actually achieve in that time and preoccupying me a little bit if I will be able to hit my story beats, that I will see that when I have all of my footage and in editing mode. Now, rewatching their opening scene, I can notice certain things and their order. For them, their sequence went:

·                     The studio producing the film (20th Century Fox)

·                     The director (David Fincher)

·                     The main cast (Ben Affleck, Rosamound Pike)

·                     The title of the movie (Gone Girl)

·                     Other actors (Neil Pactrick, etc.)

·                     Other contributors to the film

·                     The screenplay (Gillian Flynn)

I like how the words get dissolved as the main shot appears later, I want to be able to create a similar effect for my film. When presenting the first aspects of the film, I noticed, they decided to cut from the black background to the shot, and then a black background again. Though I do not necessarily know if I want to do that yet, I understand the tone that they were going for, a more of a mystery vibe as the protagonist talks in the background. I think, in my own opinion, that I like more how the credits go with shots showing the surroundings of the characters, the town of where they live, with the soundtrack behind, which also shows the character having their regular routine. That is something that I particularly want to do with my introductory scene, showing Mariposa having their routine and having shots of their surroundings. 

While seeing other short openings to films that treat psychological disorders and problems similar to the ones being experimented by my protagonist, I saw Silver Linings Playbook. Though I have seen this movie before, but now I was trying to analyze how they did their credits. It was interesting, I saw similar pattern to the one described above, almost the same order, so that must be the code that there is to present movies of this category. Not only the order of presentation of the different credits, but also how they were represented, cutting to black, having some type of dialogue before the actual initial shot is shown. 

With this new information in me, I know how I would want to present my credits. First, I will present the main studio, which is Ale MP, against a black background. I will have to create a logo for my own studio, or I could present it with only the letters "Ale MP", which I prefer the second option more, makes the story and title scene more important than having the audience concentrate in how the logo looks. Instead of a black background, I decided to present the main credits against some of the establishing shots, since it has a better "look" to the type of movie I want to create and not waste actual time of my film only presenting words in a black background. The order will stay the same, with next presenting the title, "Picking Apart". For the title itself, I will do the dissolving effect as Mariposa leaves the bathroom and the mirror is presented with those words. I want it to look more animated than everything else, representing the state of mind Mariposa is in trying to eat, with each letter being mistach from the other, moving while it is being shown. I created a concept idea of what I want it to look, to have an idea of what I want while I'm editing a try to achieve something similar to it with the tools available in the program. 

Citations:

Flinch, David, director. Gone Girl. Gone Girl Opening Titles, 15 Apr. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlrSBEIZEuY.