Title research: watchthetitles.com

We got this movie title off of watchthetitles.com. For this website, we chose the title page named, “The Snow White and the Huntsman”.  In this title page, it quite basic as there is not much but just the whole name of the movie in bold black print. The background consists of a winter theme background as to resemble the winter theme since the movie is about Snow White. The title announces the identifier of your screenplay — no different than your given name that people use to refer to you. It’s important because a great title is also a key marketing factor of your script. It can win someone over right away or turn them off instantly. Not only that, a title page is important as it also gives many of the general information behind the film.
The general information that goes along with that title, including the name of the writer(s) involved, their representation, and their contact number, are essential for networking and contact information. This way, viewers get a sense of who created the films and who the movie was written and acted by. Speaking on the main title page, my group would create a more vivid and colorful title page so it can catch the viewers attention better.

Title research: Artofthetitle.com

   We got the this title page from artofthetitle.com. In this title page named the "Carnival Row", it portrays the whole text of the movie across the screen. The background resembles a temple and it seems like a fairy shape right above the text. Titles play an important role in the marketing, reception, and even understanding of a film – they are often the first piece of information that a viewer is given. Since a title needs to be appealing, memorable, original, and encapsulating all at once, a good title can be hard to come by. Watching this title page, it attracts to the viewers which is very important as you want a attractive title page so it gets the viewers attention. Since we are creating a movie, we wanted to create a similar title page where we would have the name of our movie spread across the screen and we would have a related background in the back of our title. There were many other title pages on this website that appealed to my group but we still instead to decided to go with this one instead. The bold lettering and the dark background made our eyes catch right into the title. This is what we would like when we create our own title page for our own movie. We would want the viewer to understand what we will be portraying in our movie. We want the viewers to have a glimpse of what our movie will be about.

Genre research: Jexi

      Another movie we chose for our genre is Jexi. This is a comedy based movie which features Phil, who is the main character of this movie and he has a major dependency issue -- he's addicted to his cellphone. He has no friends and his love life is nonexistent. Forced to upgrade to a new phone, Phil soon learns that the latest model comes with Jexi -- an artificial intelligence life coach, virtual assistant and cheerleader. With its help, he begins to get a real life but as he becomes less dependent on the phone, Jexi starts to morph into a tech nightmare that's determined to keep Phil all to itself. The phone assistant, Jexi starts overriding the phones control and starts ordering Phil to do actions or else the phone will act up and potentially embarrassed or ruins Phil’s reputation in public and his workplace. As the movie plays throughout, Phil starts getting more used to his phone as he sees that it not as bad as he thought since the phone got him promoted at his job and also helped him get his first girl’s number.

          My group really enjoyed this show as it not only funny but a lot of camera angles and editing techniques as used throughout the whole movie. Since the group project is focused on the opening of a movie, we watched the opening of Jexi multiple times as it was quite confusing at first since the opening of Jexi is just scenes of people walking around the streets, all staring at their cellphone so it got my group wondering what was the purpose of that other than the people in this movie is all addicted into their cellphone. However, as time passed, we gained a further understanding of the opening of Jexi, the purpose of the opening of Jexi was to show the audience and viewers that the main character is addicted to his cellphone and is not aware of his surrounding. This will eventually lead to the climax of the movie which is when Phil bumped into another person which caused him to break his phone and forced him into getting a new phone.

           The movie really starts getting more interesting as Phil receives his new phone and starts interacting with his new mobile assistant known as Jexi. My group wanted to use similar scenes from Jexi to create a humorous opening for our own movie. We wanted to make a opening such as a scene from Jexi where we will have one of our group member open a phone box to act like they just received a new phone and the phone will get activated and starts voicing commands to the group member. This will freak out the group member and we will have the group member screeching and running around the room which will set the viewers laughing. We thought this will be a very creative opening for our project because not only does it cause a sense of mystery as to what will happen throughout our movie but it will also set a good laugh seeing our members in fear and being clumsy.

Genre research: Mean Girls

Another blog being researched from the comedy genre is mean girls which has become a movie icon over the last two decades. The movie follows the life of Cady Heron who was educated in Africa from a young age by scientist parents. When her she moves to the suburbs off Illinois she finally gets to experience public school and the gets a quick run down of the highschool laws of popularity from her new friends Janis and Damian. Finding herself in the hands of supreme popularity group dubbed "the plastics" who initiate friendship with her and encouraged by Janis to reciprocate for their own amusement, Cady finds herself entangled in a world of popularity which at first starts out superficial until she fully indulges herself into becoming a plastic. This is such a great comedy movie because it accurately describes what life is like for American teens. Of course a lot of the situations are exaggerated which we believe emphasizes the comedic aspect of the movie.

The opening scene of the movie starts out with Cady's parents looking down. A low angle is used to show them talking down to someone small and young which would be assumed to be Cady. The audience however isn't aware yet of who Cady is until it is revealed she was sitting down on the porch stairs and springs up. Then the voice of Cady narrates over the movie talking about how most normal kids have their first day of school when they are five but on hers she is sixteen and how great life was in Africa until her mother acquired a job in the states. As she says goodbye to her parents and heads to cross the street she nearly walks into a rapid moving bus to which her mom reacts by screaming and Cady tells her she will be alright. This is act of surprise is funny because it is so random and pops out of no where into what seems like a very peaceful and wholesome scene of parents getting emotional on their child's first day of school. Later in the movie there is another scene where one of the plastics gets totally run over by a bus which was Cady's initial fate. It is such a strange way for an accident to happen in a movie and the way it is portrayed is what adds comedic flair.

One of the scenes from the movie shows Cady and the plastics on the phone with each other. The two other plastics had enough of their clique leader Regina George who had been taking advantage of them belittling them day one. Cady decides to trick Regina into saying what she really thinks about Gretchen and Karen while having them on the other line. On screen the girls are all shown split in 4 screens. Our group originally thought we could include a split screen call for our movie opening and have something different going on with each person. Some of them could be super weird bringing the comedic aspect while another person is completely unaware of what is going on on the other line.

Genre research: Shallow Hal

For this blog the movie being researched is Shallow Hal. The story revolves around a young man named Hal. With his father dying he took on to follow his dying wish which was to only date the embodiment of female physical perfection. Throughout the beginning Hal and his friend Mauricio only focus their attention onto physically attractive females til one day Hal has an unexpected run-in with a self-help guru Tony Robbins. Intrigued by Hal's shallowness, Tony hypnotizes him into seeing the beauty that exists even in the least physically appealing  women. I think this was a great concept for a comedy because many jokes and humor can be fit into these sorts of situations. I also think this succeeds as a comedy because it is bringing attention to something that often does happen in the real world which people can relate to. I feel as though comedy serves to make people laugh it is useful in making light of serious situations.

Me and my group decided to take a look at the opening scene of the film since for our final task we will have to create a comedic one of our own. The opening scene starts out serious. It is in a hospital setting where a doctor calls over Hal's mother to advise her of her dying husbands condition. He tells her he is heavily sedated and suggests sending in Hal for a final goodbye is not a smart idea since his thinking and speech is heavily interrupted by the morphine. She pleads for her Hal to be able to say his goodbyes and the doctor complies. Then the scene cuts to the room where Hal's father, Reverend Larson, is speaking nonsense to the nurses tending to him. When the doctor enters the room with Hal and tells the nurses to give them privacy the comedic aspects start to emerge from what is initially interpreted as a sadistic and serious opening. Larson says "Tell her to come in" thinking Hal is a girl when told of Hal's presence at the door. He then starts to discuss his regrets on settling for less like when he married Hal's mother "Betty" to which then Hal corrects to be Mary. The comedic nature of the scene is emphasized when Larson starts addressing Hal in explicit and crude speech from his deathbed. As he is dying he is telling Hal to promise to settle for female perfection which in his view is a women with "a perfect can and great toddies". It is also funny because he is a Reverend and is telling Hal to take his advice because it will make him right with the lord when actually all the advice he had given Hal is the exact opposite of what he should do to be spiritually righteous. This opening scene drives the entire plot of the movie and Hal's initial behavior as a character who had decided to follow through with his dad's wishes out of respect.

The movie really takes off when Hal meets the seemingly physically beautiful women Rosemary who is actually overweight and much larger than Hal. My group and I thought the cutting back and fourth from the scene and throughout the movie showing Hal's perspective and everyone else's perspective was very clever and funny. There is a pool scene where Hal has a canon ball competition with Rosemary. He taunts her saying she won't be able to make a splash nearly as big as him. Everyone else starts to fear when she gets on the diving board because they know she will make a ginormous splash since she is actually huge. Hal however is hypnotized and sees all "ugly" women for their true inner beauty which through his eyes he sees as very physically attractive. Due to this he sees her a small and skinny women who would have a small splash. When her splash is so humongous he is very impressed that such a physically perfect women could make such a ginormous splash when everyone is startled. The scene even zooms up to a little boy who was in the pool and landed in a tree because her splash was so big. This is such a funny dynamic and we will think out adding one similar to our project. We can have one contrasting perspectives where one of the actors interprets/sees something one way and then another person can see it totally the opposite way and then they will continuously bicker since they each think the other person is insane and wrong.

Genre research: White chicks

In this comedy genre movie, it about two FBI agent brothers, Marcus and Kevin Copeland ,accidentally foil a drug bust. As punishment, they are forced to escort a pair of socialites to the Hamptons, where they're going to be used as bait for a kidnapper but when the girls realize the FBI's plan, they refuse to go. Left without options, Marcus and Kevin decide to pose as the sisters, transforming themselves from African-American men into a pair of blonde, white women. It a very funny comedy movie with right timing set with the right dialogue from the actors.

           Throughout the whole movie, it occurs in many different settings. Since we are doing a opening of a movie for this project, we decided to look at the opening of White Chicks , the movie starts out in a drug bust. However, this drug bust was put into a humorous tone as this is a comedy movie after all. The two FBI agents were in a convenience store where they are trying to bust the ice-cream man who is potentially trying to sell drugs rather than ice-cream but little do the FBI agents know, it was the wrong suspect after they beat them up. What makes the scene more funny was the fact that the actual drug dealers came right in the store and they went into a whole gunfight after realizing they are going to get busted. Nobody got hurt but the criminals escaped. As a punishment, the director of the police department decided to task them with another job which was to be a pair of socialites’s bodyguard so they could snatch a potential kidnapper. The pair of socialites found out about the plan and was too scared to go so at the end, it was up to the two FBI agents to dress up like the female socialites which was very funny and basically throughout the whole movie, they must look and act like them till they catch the kidnapper. This is where the whole comedy of the movie is centralized.

            My group was amused by how funny this movie was so we decided to use some scenes of the movie as inspiration for our movie opening. We thought of a great scene in the movie where the two male FBI agents was putting on makeup to look like the females they was replicating. We thought we can start our opening with the similar setting where one of our actor would put makeup on and there will be a knock on the door pretending to be one of the person’s friend, and this spooked the person putting on makeup, so the actor would start rushing and knocking over props purposely. This will leave the audience very confused as to what is going on in the rest of the movie and also serves a good laugh.

Genre research: Our final decision!

We have all came to a conclusion. Out of all the genres we could've chose from we narrowed it down to two. It was the comedy genre and the horror genre. We had a lot of discussion on how we would preform the task of an opening for a movie. We discussed our schedules as we wanted to make sure we had enough days to film what we needed. For the horror genre we were going to do the opening for a movie in which a doll was possessed. For the comedy genre we talked about showing the morning routine of us teens but portraying it in a funny way. We decided to pick the comedy genre because it would take less time to film and the audience can relate to it more.