Opening Title Sequence Of Seven By Kyle Cooper

Kyle Cooper is a modern designer of motion picture title sequences and he studied graphic design at Yale university. He got his inspiration from Saul Bass, and follows in Saul Bass's foot prints. Kyle Cooper is an award winning, modern film maker who specialises in the production of opening titles, and has produced and directed over 100 different title sequences in his lifetime so far. He wrote many films such as Spider Man, Se7en, Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes and lots more.  Cooper worked at an advertising agency with offices in New York and Los Angeles. During this period, he created the title sequence for the 1995 film Se7en. I looked at the website Art Of The Title which breaks down films into snippets of the opening title scene to highlight the creativity and design put into it. 

Se7en is a psychological thriller film, which also contains horror and neo-noir elements that makes the film memorable. The director uses close up shots in the whole of the opening scene, maybe so that he doesn't reveal what the character is actually like. By the director choosing to only focus on the arms he is making the audience want to watch the rest of it to find out what the character is really like. We learn that the guy in the film is quite twisted and weird as he is shaving his finger. The film is about the se7en deadly sins gluttony, envy, lust, pride, sloth, greed and wrath. The titles and the directors names are always flashing on and quite jerky which keeps the audience interested and it could represent the characters life and what he is feeling like. The words are always moving which could also represent the movement of his life.

Connotation and Denotation

During this lesson we learnt about what connotation and denotation is. We give labels to things in order to classify them, to make clearer the meaning we are trying to convey.

Denotation is when you use a name or label the audience has used before. This evokes meaning for the audience. It is the actual process of seeing an object. For example a Christmas tree is a fir tree with balls on.

Connotation is using a name or label the audience has used before. We evoke not only the meaning we intend but also varying range of personal memories of other occasions when the word or label has been encountered. - Memories or thoughts which we inspire by using these labels. It is also words associated with what you see. For example a Christmas tree represents happiness, joy, winter.

We also learnt about oppositional and preferred reading.

Oppositional reading is if you make connotations from those which the producer intended you to make.
Preferred reading is if you make connotations that the producer of the media text meant you to make.

What Is A Thriller?

A thriller is a genre that uses suspense, tension and excitement as its main elements. They create anxiety, surprise and anticipation amongst the audience watching the film. The aim of a thriller is to keep the audience interested and on the edge of their seat.

Genre is a method of sorting films based on similarities. There are many genres such as thriller, horror, action, comedy and crime. As well as genres, there are also sub genres which are categories of films amongst a main film genre. The most common sub genres of a thriller are psychological thrillers, crime thrillers and mystery thrillers, but there is also lots more sub genres such as a political thriller, historical thriller, action thrillers and religious thrillers.

There are lots of thrillers released now, all of which create tension and excitement amongst them. Some of these films are:

Main Coursework Task

The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Prelim Video

Below is our prelim video:

Account Of Prelim Shoot

Two days before shooting are prelim task, we were put into groups and we chose what we were going to do are task on. My group decided we wanted to shoot someone being forced to set an alarm off. We chose the different camera angles we were going to use as well as the ones we had to use from the script. We wanted to use a point of view shot as well as the shots we had to use, which were a close up shot, an over the shoulder shot and a wide shot.


Then we filmed it. We started by talking about what we were going to do and if we wanted to get actors in. We decided we wanted to get people in the school to act for us. We then showed them what we needed them to do and gave them the script so they knew what to say. After that we started filming. First we filmed it all as a wide shot, then we filmed it all again as an over the shoulder shot of one of the actors. After filming that shot we filmed the whole scene with a close up. Then we changed sides and filmed the whole of the scene with an over the shoulder shot on the opposite side and then changed to shooting the whole scene as a close up on the same side. After this we did a Point of view shot so that we could get the point of view of each of the guy actor we used. The first time we filmed this it went wrong so we had to film it again and the second time it went better. Then we decided we wanted to film a close up of the girl looking nervous pulling her sleeves up and down, we filmed a close up of the alarm so that people knew what we were doing are scene on and we also did a close up shot of the door handle as the guy opens it. We also wanted to film a shot of one of the characters in focus and the other one blurred in the background but we didn't have time for that.


If we were to do this task again, I think we would have to speed up so that we had time to film everything we wanted.




After filming are prelim task we then got to watch are clips that we had filmed and edit the task. We edited are task on a program called Final Cut Pro, which was quite easy to use once we had been showed how to use it. We started by watching all of our clips through. We had made a mistake when we did one of the filming's, but luckily we had another one filmed so that we could use that. We decided as we didn't have that long to do the editing that we would keep it quite simple. We started by putting in the clip with are names on it, so that the examiner knows who did the film. We then dragged in the clips that we wanted to put in, with a mixture of close up shots, over the shoulder shot and medium close up shots. We had to keep going back to the beginning so that we could check that it all fit in right and flowed the whole time, so that it wasn't jerky. 

I think are overall prelim task was ok but if we had more time then it would have been a lot better. The overall task will be better as we will have more time to film it and to edit the clips.

Prelim Story Boards

Here are the story boards we used to film our prelim media task: