Analysis of student made opening sequences

Analysis of student made opening sequences

I decided to analyse a students piece of work which really helped my group decide on a final idea for our own piece. This piece of work got an A grade and included all the elements that an opening sequence needs. Lastly, it is relevant to our piece because 'the inner evil' connotes the idea of one person with two identities and so our piece is exactly like that however with some psychotic and horror elements as well.

The inner evil (2013)

It begins with the institutional logo which is filmed in the same setting as the actual opening sequence to create more relevance and show that it is sponsoring the film.  The music is not a conventional thriller song which I believe makes its more unique whilst also creating enigmas of where this film is going to go in terms of the narrative. I also like the idea of the flashbacks/ forwards as it is an unusual technique within this genre therefore creating individuality. On the other hand, I believe that the use of shaky camera movements such as the shallow focus of the glass was intentional as it contributes to the portrayal of the genre and the shakiness may represent the disorientation of what's happening in the characters mind. Secondly, the location it was filmed in connotes an everyday scene to show the simplistic elements and that this film would be based through the eyes of an ordinary teenage girl. Lastly, I feel the concept of this film is slightly unclear as the 'inner evil' creates enigmas whether the girl is dreaming all of those dramatic moments or whether they would actually happen later on.

In contrast to this, I found an opening sequence which I believe has various elements which let it down and therefore came across as very unprofessional.

The Bloody Suit (2013)

Firstly, the storyline behind this is too clear and it doesn't feel like an opening sequence however, after reading the overview underneath the clip I found that the narrative was completely different different to what came across showing it wasn't clearly thought through enough. Similarly, there were various continuity errors for example, running the bath without putting the plug in and the male character had a change of clothes near the end which also contributes to the poor quality of this sequence. There was no institutional logo or title to the film once again showing that the group were not organised and lacked knowledge about  conventions of opening sequences. Likewise, the credits were a very plain white font and they could have used that as an ample opportunity to exhibit their genre. I noticed that some credits were accidentally repeated as well which could have been a very easy thing to fix. Although, their music clearly resembled a thriller genre, the way it was integrated into the piece was very poor and at points it wasn't necessary as it only played for around 2 seconds. In my opinion I think they should have used only one song and had it continuously playing throughout the whole piece. Lastly, the camera work did have various shots and used a variety of editing techniques such as cross cutting from the car to the house and colourising (when the knife is being removed), however overall it wasn't a polished piece of work and I feel they could have done much better.