American Psycho Opening Sequence

We evaluated an opening sequence in more detail noting everything the happened in the opening 2-3 minutes. We used American Psycho as our example. Here is what we found:

Story Board

We needed to create a story board so we had an idea of what it is that we were going to put into our film.

This is a brief overview of what is going to happen in our film in the 12 shots.

Shot 1: The guy enters the house
Shot 2: He places his weapons on the table
Shot 3: He then walks to the bathroom washing his hand with blood on it etc
Shot 4: Leaves bathroom... walks towards the kitchen
Shot 5: Gets a glass and he opens the fridge door
Shot 6: The 'hitman' is sitting on the coach
Shot 7: The guy pours drink in his glass
Shot 8: Hitman aims with his gun at the guy
Shot 9: The guy closes the fridge door
Shot 10: Hitman shoots the guy
Shot 11: The guy is limping and squirming
Shot 12: Hitman points the gun at the guy and shoots him.

After producing our first copy of our story board, we believe we had to improve it and make add a few amendments so that our planning before filming is even more easier and less time-consuming, adding more visual shots and angles. 

Target Audience

Production Name & Logo Ideas

We were instructed to create our own individual production name and logo for our film production company. At first, we had to think of our Production name; which lead to a possibility of 4 different production names as potentials:

• UN Productions
• A-Game Studios
• Captial Productions
• Winning Productions

Why A-Game Studios? 

We specifically looked at a  range of established Production Companies and we noticed that Paramount Pictures resembles a 'top' and 'supreme' Production Company film, where our Production name 'A-Game Studios' has a similar concept which effectively emphasises a superlative Production Company, reflecting on why our opening sequence should be disseminated as a mainstream. 

Below are 6 different logo idea's for our film production company, 'A-Game Studios':

We then decided that number 1 and 4 where both potentials for our Production logo, where we then decided to create both and then decide which one we believe is more prominent: 

Logo 1: 

Logo 2: 

Whilst designing our production logo, we had a few difficulties with creating from our initial idea, therefore we had to make a few alterations with the logo design.  

Comparing: 

We believed that Logo 1 was fairly complicated and unclear to notice our Production company named as 'A-Game Studios' - where it is arguable that it looks like 'GAME Studios' instead. As a result, we decided to select Logo 2 as our final Production logo. We believe that 'A-Game Studios' is highly emphasised in the logo itself, where the capital letter A clearly represents our Production Company as a superlative. However when coming to create animated indent we had great difficulty to make it look professional and therefore went with the first logo. When animating the first logo we would make it obvious that the production company name was A- game studios.

Animating our final Production logo:

To create our final production logo, we experimented using a variety of software's such as Final Cut Pro, LiveType and Motion. At the end we decided to use LiveType as it was the easiest to create from our idea. We didn't relate the indent completely to our logo idea, however we did our best to try achieve this.

Mood Boards

We both created separate mood boards highlighting some individual influences and inspirations, in which we took from other films using images which emphasises some aspects of the theme in majority of the films, helping us have a better sense of the film we want to create.

Umed's Mood Board:

 

Naiem's Mood Board:

Reflection on our Mood Boards:

We created individual mood boards, as we believe it would be fairly straightforward to identify the main theme/concept of our movie, through images. Essentially, this would help us respond back on a range of influences and inspirations, leading us to make further progression in our film production, where we both can exchange each of our ideas and thoughts and eventually start building the main core of our own film. This involves influences such as: props being used, make-up, costumes, potentially the setting of the film and even possible camera shots/angles.

Los Blancos Synopsis

In this synopsis we outline the main parts of our film and what is going to happen in these parts. The Introduction involves: production logos, main title, credits, music and opening scene. The middle or the climax of the film. To end the synopsis we will indicate what our plan is for the conclusion of the film.

The film will begin with the logos of one already established film production company and one which we created ourselves. It will be followed by dramatic music which will set the tone of the film and emphasise its genre. Whilst the music is playing a few credits listing the main people involved with the creation of the film (both actors and backstage personal). Following a few credits we will introduce our character (the victim)  who has just returned home after completing an assignment. Being covered with the blood of his victims he begins to remove his clothes and take out and place key props which he used during his assignment. He then walks into the bathroom and begins to clean himself. He then enters the kitchen where a Hitman, 'Jose Sanchez', is sitting on the other side of the room, where the victim does not notice him.

The climax of the film will be after this scene, which explains how the protagonist, Jose Sanchez, joined a 'world-known' agency, Los Blancos. Eventually, he fails to complete a specific mission; leading his fellow agents from ‘Los Blancos' to terminate him. He then responds and attempts to kill as many members from the agency.

The ending of the film will then contain a cliff-hanger, which will therefore let the film open as a potential sequel, where Jose Sanchez escapes from his killers by leaving the country, but on arrival to the border his being awaited for by another assassin, who is the founder of the agency, Los Blancos. 

Influences

Here is our influences and ideas for our film. We had two ideas for different films which fall under two genres. We created a spider diagram evaluating key features of films which are in those genres and their main themes. We then decided on the film type which would be manageable and both exciting for both us and the audience.

We then went on to create a more in-depth analysis of our influences.