Survivors TV Series: Episode 1.
Devised by Terry Nation and produced by Terrance Dudley.
Target Auidence: Fans of post-apocalyptic media and TV dramas.
This series is all about an accident at a bio lab releasing a deadly virus that kills 99% of the population. After the disaster the survivors form a group to try and rebuild the world as we know it.
From watching the first episode I was able to gather the show uses a number of fast closeups; namely of the many various cities worldwide. This is used to the effect of showing how big the catastrophe actually has affected the world, and the fastness representing how quickly the virus has spread.The first shot shows an idyllic summers day (the calm before the storm) with a woman playing tennis, building up suspense in the audience making them want to watch further to see how the situation is going to change.
We then zoom out and see she's actually playing tennis with a machine, this is showing the idea of
isolation; being alone, something that the survivers of a post apocalyptic disaster would be feeling.
The only other significant thing I could pick up from the first few minutes, is when we have a match on action when a woman hands over a glass of orange juice.
I believe that I wouldn't use too many features from this series, it's far too slow getting started and I believe if I took this route with our movie, then it would be extremely boring for the audience.
The Day After Tomorrow
Directed and produced by Roland Emmerich.
Target Audience: Fans of disaster movies e.g. 2012 and also movie enthusiasts.
From the offset the music is extremely subtle, and something we would often stereotype the 'upper-class' to listen to. It comes across as very royal and this links in with the whole scientific theme of the movie. From this I can infer that The Day After Tomorrow is extremely quick at setting the story for the rest of the movie; something I would want to link into my own movie opening.
The first few minutes are title credits, that stand out effectively on the snow and ice. We are shown a constantly moving aerial view of the ocean, we can see that the majority of the ice has melted, as said above this is great in linking in with the scientific, and global warming theme that is portrayed throughout the duration of the movie.
Characters only come into play around the 2:45 mark of the movie, although this is a very long time for a movie to go without characters, in the case of The Day After Tomorrow it works perfectly in being able to set the scene well.
Resident Evil Apocalypse.
Directed by Alexander Witt and produced by Paul Anderson.
Target Audience: Video game fans and fans of the franchise.
This movie starts off totally different to the others in this genre. Various high tech screens are shown, with the main character detailing the outline of the plot; without making it obvious. I think this is a brilliantly clever technique to use within a film, especially with this one that takes quite a lot of concentration to understand the storyline.
The most notable part during this section of the film, would be how we realise through the characters dialogue that she's in fact speaking after the events have happened; perhaps ruining the plot that she's likely going to survive?
A blackout transition then takes us to the title sequence, fading out again to take us to the start of the film, similar to the other ones we then proceed to be shown a plain idyllic scene clearly showing how unsuspecting the characters in the movie are to the catastrophes to come.
Costumes in this film are practically the same as others in this genre; plain clothing is used to show us how normal peoples lives are before the events of a catastrophe. Although sometimes we do have out of the ordinary attire for certain characters to distinguish them differently from the rest; as the main character in this film does.
Knowing
Directed by Alex Proyas and produced by Todd Black
Beginning with the title sequence on the background of a stary night, this links in with the movies storyline of a future being predicted; mainly including the event of a alien invasion, the reason for having a night background.
Swiftly the movie jumps to a long shot of a school with the location and date being shown at the bottom of the screen, this is defiantly needed in helping to show people the change in both time from modern day to now, and exactly what country the film is set in. Straight away a setting is being established.
The camera then begins to be took up by the vivid brightness of the sun, this is a match on action as when the camera zooms closer into the sun, then our view as an audience gets harder to focus. An obvious effect of the sun. We're using a similar sort of thing in our own movie, where someone has a tear rolling down their cheek and the camera blurs to match this.
As the sun takes up the full proportion of the screen we instantly cut from the courtyard to the classroom.
The remainder of the first few minutes just continues with a typical classroom atmosphere. Although one thing I could pick up is one girl feels 'isolated' from the rest of the class. Isolation is a big theme in this genre; so it's great they managed to link it in.
Overall from my analysis I've been able to note costumes; editing; sound; camera shots; and general techniques to build up a list of potential things we could use during the first portion of our movie.
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