Textual Analysis - Opening credit Sequence of Watchmen

In this essay I will be analyzing the opening sequence of Zack Snyder’s box office hit and
Feature film recreation of the highly successful Graphic novel ‘The Watchmen’.
The sequence begins with a non-diegtic song playing over the top of the shot that’s slowly being revealed. The song ‘The times they are a changin’ By Bob Dylan is this particular track that we can hear.
The slow fade in reveals a mid shot of a masked vigilante punching an armed crook in the face, the setting is a 1950’s esque setting with bystanders in suites and glamorous dresses stand watching as the paparazzi snaps the shot as the brawl ensues. The shot is shot in extremely high slow motion as the characters on screen’s action eventually become visible as the camera continues to track backwards. This use of camera work and editing style flow perfectly together as it enables the audience to capture every last detail of what is going on in the shot, completely immersing them in the action and setting in which this particular event is happening. In the background of the set you can see very early posters of the Batman comics, this being an intended reference or tribute as it were, to another great graphic novel turned movie, additionally in this shot the films title and main colour ‘theme’ is yellow, which is apparent throughout the opening sequence as the credits appearing are displayed in a classic comic book style and in bright yellow, creating a continuous theme for the movie and making it essentially the dominant colour.
The next 2 shots follow similar traits with paparazzi being on scene with the extremely smooth flow of mid-shots and slow motion revealing the full troop of vigilantes from the that era, these vigilantes being known as ‘The minutemen’.
As the opening sequence progresses, the timeline moves forwards through the ages until present day, showing key events in world history, such as the Kennedy assassination and the Hiroshima bombing, although a slight twist being put on these events as 2 different members of the ‘Minutemen’ are shown to be the people responsible.
Bob Dylan’s track continues to play over the shots as they change through the times, creating an atmosphere of a ironic peace and tranquility as the shots displayed mainly show the dramatic fall of the minute men and then re-creating the iconic shot of the old vigilante cast the new team, ‘The watchmen’, pose for their group photo but without paparazzi attention and the glamour of being a crime fighting hero lost to the ages.
The editing style that is used is an editorial trait used by Director Zack Snyder in which he uses extremely high definition super-slow motion shots to build a bridge between a still photo and a moving image, a photo can be analyzed forever, but a moving image only lasts for that brief moment in time and when it goes faster it becomes less immersive, if it is played so slowly then it can be fully admired for the masterpiece it is, whether that being the detail and authenticity of the set or the moment the camera is capturing.

Evaluation

1)In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The title of the film, font and style.
The chosen style for the title has been kept simple, as shown in the first frame above and in the middle. It has been kept on a plain black background as found in most adaptations of graphic novels or films in similar styles which inspired this film, such as shown in the example thumbnails:

Although there is a trend following red titles on black, we have decided to keep out titles white with a grey background to resemble white chalk. The font used also relates to the title 'Chalkboard' as the style is very 'crumbly' yet solid like the material chalk.

Setting/Location
The second frame shows the location for our opening which is the main characters dining area in her 'house' in the film. The choice for location was simple; we wanted to make it seem more realistic to the audience so we thought to use a place that everyone is familiar with such as the dining room rather then somewhere such as a Field, football pitch or any particular environment that we would not commonly come across in day to day life. This was inspired by the likes of the famous shower scene from the film 'Psycho' (click here for a reminder of the scene). The thought of being attacked in a place of comfort is more of a chilling thought for many as its least expected.

Costumes and props
There is a relevantly common use of particular props and costumes in thriller films, making it a typical media convention. The next frame shows the chalkboard, one of the most significant props out of the many we used. In thriller films, especially if there is some form of enigma, props play a big part in creating this atmosphere and mystery. We used various props that can be commonly associated with a horror/thriller such as fake blood, knives, gloves and so on. Our character is dressed in smart business wear (suit, shirt and trousers) as her costume which connotes power and authority. As with many thriller films its not uncommon to see the pro/antagonist dressed in formal wear as this sets the more 'serious tone' of the genre. A good example, as found out from my research is the main characters from Se7en. Click here to see image.


Special effects used
Originally we were going to create a similar effect that Frank Miller uses in his films (click here for screenshot of sin city), where everything is in high contrast and a certain colour has been picked to stay throughout the film (usually red). However, due to the nature of the actress's hair colours and furniture being tinted red, this proved to be difficult to achieve on the software Final Cut Pro. Some contrast has been added to our final product but it was limited as we decided to keep details clear, which turning the contrast up would have taken away. Our final product has been presented in black and white to keep the old fashioned yet classic thriller feel.

Genre and how its suggested
The bottom left frame shows a knife lying on blood stained material; this has been chosen as it represents the 'horror' aspect from our thriller as it suggests murder, harm and stirs up emotions of fear and terror which a typical horror should. The 'thriller' genre is suggested through the voice-overs of our detective, who speaks in a very gritty confident tone that is common with detectives in thriller films.

How characters are introduced/established
The main character is introduced by first only just concentrating on her eyes which are closed until the very end of the opening. By this, suspense is created and the audience are left wondering about our main character until a bit more is revealed after the title. As seen in the bottom middle frame, her eyes open and the camera zooms out to show her sitting in smart attire, drinking wine next to a corpse covered in blood. This connotes to our audience that she is calm yet powerful. The cut-aways show various clues to our character and her personality (as shown in the middle right frame) as words are presented to our audience such as jealousy. We took inspiration from the opening credits of Se7en;

Story and how the opening sets it up
As show in the last frame and mentioned above, our opening was inspired by Se7en, in which a serious of 'clues' about the story are presented in short shots. Blood stained notes, documents on handling issues such as jealousy, weapons, stories where 'i win, you loose' have been highlighted and of course the writing on the chalkbaord itself help create enigma as well as slowly unravelling the story without giving too much away. Like a typical thriller, the voice overs suggest that she is being questioned and the role of a detective is introduced.

2)How Does your Media product represent particular social groups?

In our opening sequence, we decided to contradict the stereotypical roles of antagonist’s/protagonist’s within thriller films by casting a middle aged female as the main character and also the villain, (a slight cross between the role of Anthony Hopkins role as ‘Dr. Hannibal Lecter’ and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ role in ‘Chicago’), thus we challenged the stereotypical conventions of both a male and female role’s within the media and more specifically a thriller film.
The male is generally displayed as the dominant, heroic and powerful character within thriller films and the female being the Damsel in distress, but we decided to create a complex and intriguing combination of a thriller that focuses on a middle aged female villain. As stated in our proposal, the main character is a powerful businesswoman living a content life with her husband and she’s at the top of her game in terms of her success at work. Until, that is, she discovers her husbands cheating secrets, which causes her to lose her mind and go on a merciless, murderous rampage, killing her husband and his lovers, but in doing so it leads to her killing all those who have caused her pain in her life.
Therefore furthering a contradiction of the stereotypical female role within thriller movies, by turning the gender roles upside down, we can display women as strong independent women, for example in Movies such as Quentin Tarantinos ‘Deathproof’ And Russ Meyers ‘Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’
But both of these films have both shown females vulnerabilities and these being their emotions and sensitivity; though appearing strong, a female’s actions tend to be far more emotionally driven and in our thriller, our character follow this given stereotype and is driven by pure emotion, pure misery and distress which leads to her breakdown and psychopathic rampage.

3)What kind of media institution might distribute your film and why?

The media institution I would chose to distribute my media project would be Film4, the reason being that they have an outstanding track record for funding and distributing a number of low budget independent British movies within the UK and now internationally thanks to the success of the production behind US director Kevin Smiths indie classic ‘Dogma’ and the hugely successful ‘slumdog Millionaire’
The idea of using a huge well established American production company such as Universal would not cross my mind as it would be a very bold move to ask them to help distribute a short, low budget, British film.

4)Who would be the audience for your film?

This Beverley Lang, 31 year old single mother of two living in the city. She runs her own business selling herbal remedies and other organic produce in a small store. On a daily basis she dresses smart in business wear and keeps up her professional appearance. She enjoys the occasional shopping trip or dinner date with her female friends in town. She is confident and assertive. Her taste in films consist of action, adventure and thriller as she enjoys suspense and upbeat paces similar to the people we interviewed and carried out our surveys with. As our film is a suspense thriller, it would appeal to her. Her typical favourite films include the likes of se7en, Goodfella's, American psycho, sin city, watchmen and silence of the lambs. As well as enjoying big movie titles distributed by well known companies, she also enjoys independent film labels such as the ones typically shown on movie channel 'Film 4'. It may be to her convenience being busy business woman with a family to watch films in the evening after work and when her children are asleep to watch films on the television or on DVD.
I believe this is a typical audience member in which our film would appeal to, a middle-aged woman who has had time to experience the ups and downs of life with issues to do with a partner, work, health and daily life as she will be able to empathise and understand our main character better then, for example, a young man.

5)How did you attract/address the audience?

6)What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The camera which we have used is the following:

The camera we used was a Canon XM2, which features:
• ¼” 470K pixel 3CCD with pixel shift
• Canon Professional L-Series Fluorite Lens
• 20x optical zoom/100x digital zoom F1.6
• Optical image stabiliser with VAP
• Direction accurate stereo microphone
• Two-channel audio level manual control
• 2.5” 200K colour LCD/0.44’ 180K colour VF
• Three shooting modes: normal, photo, frame movie

(Information taken from a search on the cannons official website)
As we did not use any sound recorded, we did not have the worry of capturing any unwanted sound however if we wanted to achieve the effect of creating background noise for our footage as apposed to having a soundtrack play over the footage it would not have been the best of quality.

We used various software on Windows and Mac computers as well as websites to help us with this project. Below is a mood board to demonstrate.

Google - Search engine we used for finding websites

Microsoft powerpoint - Used to create powerpoints mainly for visual demonstrations

Microsoft word - Drafts of written work created here such as questionnaire

Final Cut Pro - Used to edit our footage for the film such as cutting clips, slow motion, transitions of frames, adding sound and etc

Compressor - Was used to compress our final piece and took care of the encoding

Bing - Was used as a search engine for any images needed as it provided a better visual search

Youtube - Was used to research soundtrack and view any tutorial videos as well as upload our own movie

Hotmail - This was our means of communication and sending any documents etc

Adobe Photoshop - Used to create/edit any images

7)Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel that our preliminary task helped us become more comfortable with the new equipment as none of our group members have used them before and we had practice filming various angles and shot sizes to give us a basic idea of what we can achieve using the equipment available. We has discovered that although our task was simple, to film a character walking down a corridor into a room, we had learnt that there are many creative ways in which this could be done and the numerous shots that could be used to create this. I feel that this really helped as our final product as we concentrated more on the angles, shots, frame sizes and composition which we had learnt from this first exercise and helped us create something interesting to watch. I feel that although it was an advantage to be comfortable with the camera and create these shots, we had the disadvantage of not concertrating on other aspects such as sound so we did not explore this in our final piece as we kept it simple.

Audience Feedback

The following is a review from an audience member of our Opening Sequence.

The opening sequence of 'Chalkboard' Held my interest thoroughly throughout as it maintained a simple and satisfying flow of non-digetic audio and simplistic editing styles. the jump cuts back and forth as the sequence continues allowed the pace of the credits to become that more effective as they jump onto screen shaking violently against a black background. I felt it worked well and kept me interested throughout, especially with several shots of particular documents with words such as 'jealous' appearing on the screen.
I also enjoyed the use of extreme close ups of the female's eyes as they brought a real sense of enigma and mystery to the sequence.
The only real fault i could pick out was the lack of a buzz track for the voice over, when the voice over cuts in you can hear the static of the recording also.
but other than that it was well shot, well casted and edited.

- Eddie Mitchell

Rating for our film

"Works which feature the following
are likely to receive more restrictive
classifications: portrayal of violence
as a normal solution to problems,
heroes who inflict pain and injury,
callousness towards victims, the
encouragement of aggressive
attitudes, and content which depicts
characters taking pleasure in pain
or humiliation."

The above extract has been taken from the BBFC website (click here to view) while searching for the approriate rating to give our film.
Our film has themes of violence right from the very start due to 'weapons' such as knives and 'blood' covered surfaces. The BBFC guidlines state that any film or video game containing strong scenes of violence is given the rating of '18' as it is only suitable for adults.

Costume research

Here i have created a slide demonstrating common costumes for main characters in thriller films to give an idea and inspire the attire for our main character.

Costumes For Main Characters

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Camera Work

Camera Demonstration

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Optional cut-aways

If the above opening scene is too short then below is the optional addition to the script, starting after the movie title instead of the opening credits. Below are a series of various flashbacks which can be used in addition to the opening credits, either all or some of them. The opening credits will appear on a black screen, a flashback will show, then the credits again and so on or the credits appearing during these shots. Two sets of shots; one for Riley showing parts of her path to madness and one for Detective Lax showing clues and an insight to his life

SHOTS FOR RILEY

MEDIUM SHOT
shows an open window with voila blowing in from the wind then the camera tilts slowly down to the floor to show a knife and string tangled around it

MEDIUM SHOT
we see the edge of a modern television, running centre of the frame, showing a blank wall and a fuzzy screen

MEDIUM-SHOT
outdoor wall surface that gets splattered with blood

VERY LONG SHOT
showing a pathway in a park/open area with a couple in the distance walking, tall man with arm around the shoulder of a shorter female companion, camera tilting up towards the sky

MEDIUM CLOSE-UP
very shallow depth of field showing a dusty surface and very blurred dark background as shadows flicker over it

MEDIUM CLOSE-UP
slow pan of a surface covered in lots of printed out papers from self-help websites from left to right and fade out

CLOSE-UP
showing a pile of handwritten letters covered in little vibrant red drops of blood

LONGSHOT
we see a shadow cast upon a wall showing a male figure sitting down with her head in her hands

Screenplay

UNTITLTED
Screenplay by Diana Patharai
09/02/10

FADE IN

INT. RILEYS KITCHEN – TABLE

EXTREME CLOSE-UP
of Riley with her eyes closed

Riley opens eyes to reveal a pair of blue eyes, bloodshot and tired looking staring straight ahead
’Moonlight Sonata’ by Beethoven (soundtrack) starts to play faintly

CAMERA VERY SLOWLY ZOOMS OUT

As the camera zooms out to reveal more of her expressionless face, we see slightly smudged lipstick and several day old make-up then un-brushed hair as it turns into a close-up

DETECTIVE LAX ( V.O)
How long ago did you find out

MEDIUM CLOSE-UP CA
Hands in elegant red leather gloves searching through papers on top of a desk which stop when finds and picks up a folded up piece of paper which is unfolded to reveal handwritten letter which is then slowly crushed with the hands

BACK TO RILEY

As the camera continues to zoom out, we see Riley putting a glass of red wine to her lips and hold it there a few seconds before taking a sip and removing it out of the frame

RILEY (V.O)
When it was too late

Riley is now in a medium-close up by this point, showing her creased formal clothes and the elegant necklace around her neck as she picks her glass of wine up again and takes another sip

DETECTIVE LAX ( V.O)
Why didn’t you talk to someone

MEDIUM CLOSE-UP CA
Phone flashing on the table, caller ID comes up as ‘LIAR’, with the background out of focus until it stops ringing and we have a deep depth of field showing a shadow standing looking away from the phone which is not in focus anymore

BACK TO RILEY

By this point Riley in a medium long shot with the camera still very slowly zooming out , showing her sitting at a table with the top of what appears to be a mysterious object on the table to her left and a bottle of wine in her hand to her right as she takes another sip

RILEY (V.O)
I wanted to play along with their game…

Riley is now in a proper long shot, revealing the mysterious object next to her is another body sitting at the table with its head down in a pool of glistening red blood – her blank face suddenly shows a smile as her eyes widen

CUT TO BLACK SCREEN

RILEY (V.O)
…and I won.

Soundtrack volume increases and becomes dominant (volume increase from 2:10 time of soundtrack)

MOVIE TITLE
OPENING CREDITS

Proposal

Riley Dawson, a 30-something year old powerful business woman lives a content modern life with her husband. Her success at her job soars sky-high and things seem to be going well until one day she discovers her partner’s dark cheating secrets. Her mind becomes filled with madness and her heart fills with murderous rage which causes her to go on her rampage to seek revenge. First killing off her husband and his lover, she uncontrollably goes on a spree seeking out all those who have caused her pain to return the gesture.

Aging Detective Lax is fed up with his job, his love life is non-existent since his girlfriend died in a tragic accident over 15 years ago and his life seems to be routine while his job takes over. His recent drug addiction causes his mind to become impaired and think differently, which may be just the thing needed when he is asked to investigate the series of murders by a mysterious client.

Film analysis - Sin City

The first shot that the film opens with is an establishing shot of a city. Although the film is in black and white, it is distinctive that it is set in the night as the lights of rooms in buildings appear to be on through this opening scene. Connotations that this is a busy urban city are suggested through diegetic sound as cars aggressively sound their horns and police sirens are heard. The first character known as ‘The Customer’ is introduced as she sways into shot while several slow and seductive blows of a saxophone in the soundtrack emphasize her status as what appears to be as a sex symbol. Her vibrant red dress and lipstick appear to be the only color on screen, connoting ideas of love, power and passion while further emphasizing her sexual status.

The first bit of dialogue is introduced which beings to narrate and pick up on subtle emotions and body language which the viewer may have missed. ‘She shivers in the wind, like the last leaf on a dying tree’ is the first bit of narrative and is contrasting to the first impression the audience would have received regarding The Customer being a powerful sex symbol. This portrays a fragile side to the character and references to loneliness and death connotes unhappiness. The shallow depth of field in the next shot adds a moment of enigma as we see the figure of another character slowly walking towards the camera and creating a two shot as the audience is introduced to the character known as ‘The Man’ who we later discover is also the narrator. A series of shot reverse shot’s are used to display the unusually relaxed interaction between these two characters and to establish their relationship as people who have just met. The instrumental soundtrack is far in the background yet it subtly creates an atmosphere firstly through the same seductive saxophone in sync when The Man’s dialogue turns lustful. Sounds of elegant piano can then be heard in harmony with the saxophone turning the mood from one suggesting sexual motivations to an atmosphere reflecting classic Hollywood film noir when the conversation turns more deep and meaningful. This idea is further reinforced with the black and white style of the film itself and in the two shot showing the two characters dressed in formal eveningwear. Additionally, it can be argued that the soundtrack is like a rhythm for words creating the idea that the narrations are poetic.

As the entire film is in black and white, the director plays about with the use of color in order to emphasize and draw any focal points of certain motifs in editing. This is displayed again in the scene when The Man talks about The Customer’s eyes whilst lighting her cigarette in a close-up and her eyes flash a vibrant green. The Customer turns away and it is then cut to two shot in which The Man appears to reach for his jacket pocket but suddenly stops when asked a deep and personal question to which he hesitates to continue and drops his hand, further engaging the audience. The Man’s character is established slightly in a subtle way when he stops what he is doing, as later on we discover he may have had intention to kill her that that precise moment, and answers very meaningfully. The shot slowly zooms into a close-up in which the audience can see the frightened and sorrowful expressions on The Customer’s face when he talks about her being sick of running and not wanting to face ‘it’ alone connoting possible themes of crime and action as well as adding to enigma.

The next part of the opening shots a scene created in editing with special effects as everything appears in silhouette form, including the two characters in a long shot. This shows The Customer and The Man embrace, another unexpected event, but more importantly the audience can see that she is falling into his arms which could connote her character as easily wooed and displays fragility as he is holding her. The next shot focus’s on The Man as he narrates his final thoughts whilst The Customer is still being held in his arms. The Piano soundtrack stops to play after a sinister-like sounding note is played. The diegetic sound of rain falling is heard adding gloominess to the atmosphere before, adding a colossal twist, he shoots The Customer. A second after this, the sound of thunder is heard once again adding gloom. The Man’s character is revealed further here, as his narrative remains gentle and poetic after he commits murder, ‘The silencer makes it whisper with a gunshot’. His tender gentleman-like qualities are displayed as a high angle shows him laying The Customer down and cradles her in his arms as she dies. By this point, the audience would be fully engaged as there are many unanswered questions left. The two characters and their meeting was unusual and mysterious as not much information was given away but the final twist is thrown before the opening titles when The Man casually says ‘Ill cash her check in the morning’ causing even more confusion and enigma more the audience.

The final shot, a high angle, is zoomed out of rapidly and the camera seemingly circles around the city as the soundtrack being to play the theme song consisting of sleazy sounding saxophone music, bass guitar and offbeat noises of broken instruments which continues playing through the opening credits. The effect of zooming out and the music playing connotes how this is just one insignificant thing that’s happened tonight in this sleazy city and there is more going on. Here the themes of sex, violence and crime appear apparent as the film title can be cleverly seen made out of lit up buildings of the city before turning blood red, again, reinforcing the themes.

Our influence - Frank Miller

Miller’s film-noir style comic books became well-known in the 70s and 80s when he wrote and illustrated comic such as Daredevil and x-men. He has been employed by big publishing companies such as Marvel and DC, when his legacy started with his creation of Batman. His has various grim and sometimes violent trademarks within his work include characters facing difficulties with mental or physical aspects along with those characters that have been killed or severely flawed who become stronger and powerful.
The style of our script falls within similar trademarks of Frank Miller. The main character is suffering various mental problems, inherited from a long line of family history. The entire film ideally and indefinitely the opening of the film will include violence and gore.