In-Depth Analysis of a Film from a similar Genre

A Cinderella Story (2004) - Opening Sequence evaluation

A Cinderella Story which released in 2004, is a teen romantic comedy; starring Hilary Duff and Chad Micheal Murry and was directed by Mark Rosman.

Once the film has started, we are shown beautiful tracking shots of mountains, and non-diegetic instrumental music being played in the background. Now this already starts to tell the audience that the story would be much like a fairytale. After the tracking shot, it goes into an establishing shot presenting a castle which is placed between the mountains. This immediately makes the audience think of it as a fairytale story, where the price or princess would live in a lavishing castle. Additionally the text in which the credits are displayed is very old fashioned script writing which makes us believe that the story is set in, "Once upon a time..." which is typical for fairytale's. All these connotations make us link to the fairytale story of Cinderella together with the castle and old script text.

A voice-over starts, telling us the actual story of Cinderella which signifies to the audience, that the girl who is talking (Hillary Duff) may be the main character who's life


may be similar to Cinderella's. A zoom out shot occurs making us realise that the castle and mountain setting was not real in actual, however then the camera pans to see where the actual location of this story is set. The non-diegetic music also changes into some music which has a feeling of humour in it, which suggests the comedic side of this story.

The theme of closeness and togetherness is presented after the pan, of a little girl hugging laughing along with her father. This mise-en-scene presentation nicely ties in with romance. There is a montage of the little girl growing up with her father, which suggests that the film would be most probably be about her life.

Super title's appear however in a different style and font to the previous ones. This time there is handwritten element to it which suggests the old times of the actual Cinderella. Furthermore the supper title's are in a pink colour which again ties in with romance.

A diner is shown, to which the audience learns that the father actually owns it. Facial expressions of everyone inside the diner are very happy and filled with laughter, be it customers or the staff. It all is presented as if they were all a great big family, again portraying the theme of togetherness. Positive non-diegetic sound is played throughout this, however when an older female is introduced, negative non-diegetic music starts to play which lets the audience know that the new character is not positive.

The ugly Step-Sisters

The scene then cross-cuts, to her father and the older female getting married where two new characters are introduced; her two step-sisters. They both are shown fighting which again suggests the comedic side of the film. The audience by now can tell that the new step-mom will be the evil step-mother and her daughters would play the two ugly step-sisters from the original Cinderella story. Therefore we can also tell, that the girl talking is portraying Cinderella and that she will be the love interest in this film.

The theme of togetherness is yet again presented, when we see the girl and her father both talking to each other on a bed. He has just finished reading her a fairytale story which causes them to talk about Price and Prissiness' and also dreams and aspirations. This again links back to the original story and love.

A close up shot of the girl and her dad is shown where their hands are slipping away from one another as an earthquake is occurring. You learn that the father dies and sad non-diegetic music is played. Her step-mom is now shown in control and send the little girl to live in the basement, very similar to the actual story.

This opening sequence contains various of signifier's to connotate the Romantic Comedy genre to the audience. It's main focus, theme wise is shown to be love and togetherness. The audience is able to recognise what genre the film is, however there was no male character introduced, different to other romantic comedy films.

Draft Survey and Explanation

Below you can find an image of our draft survey, which we as a group decided we would put up on on a survey designing website from where we then can distribute a link out to the public.

Initial Draft Survey

However as this is the draft version, we are able to discuss in which order the questions should be  and also make a few adjustments. Therefore we created another draft survey, however this time in the layout which we would use for the public.

Final Draft Survey

We started off by asking people their gender and age so that we know if they are falling into our target audience. We need to know this because through this we would be able to identify their likes and dislikes in the genre Rom-Com, which would be beneficial to us whilst deciding on the final plot and also on the opening sequence of our film.

To know a it more about them, we asked what they or their colleagues like to do in their free time. This is because we would like the audience to feel connected to the character and for that we would need to know what people like/enjoy doing in their spare time. By having this information we would be able to make a character sketch of he lead/s who would have a similar taste like our target audience. 

Survey: Questions 1-4

After asking about them, we got onto questions which would help us making important decisions for our opening scene. First we asked from who's perspective they would like the Rom-Com to be from. Now this is a multiple choice question where they could choose; from the female lead's perspective, from the male leads, or from both. The reason why we asked this question is because so that we know from who's view to base the film from and also it would play an important part to the setting and music as a female oriented movie would end to have lots of voice overs, have beautiful scenery and a competition up against them, which would be another female who would usually be more prettier and popular than them. However if it would be a male oriented movie, you tend to have alcohol and also a close set of male buddies in the film. In that film, it would be about how the guy tries to impress the girl and finally is able to get her. And if it is a movie from both's perspective then the film usually focuses on their break up and how they try dealing with it and in the end get back together.

Survey: Questions 5-7

Another question we asked about the characters is the age and what their ethnicity should be. The reason this is important to us is because the setting and the style of the characters is different if they are teenagers compared to working adults. Also there is a vast change of dialogue between these two age groups. Furthermore there is another change of dialogues between different races. For example, stereotypically Black people would use Slang language whilst Asians would have an accent to their speech.

Survey: Question 8

Then we asked what characteristics they would expect the leads to have. This is because we want to know what they are expecting out of a Rom-Com character. This is again another help or us on the character sketch which we would be doing soon.


The last but not least we asked if they would like music or dialogue in the opening scene of the film. This is because there are various Rom-Com movies which would start of with either a dialogue or upbeat music which would set a happy mood, however a dialogue could tell the audience about the character or their background if it is a voice-over.

Target Audience Profile

In order to identify our right target audience we first tried to imagine just one person who would watch the film and what their character would be. Because for example, if we decided this would be targeted at females in their 20’s then we cannot guarantee of it’s success as there are females who prefer action movies instead of romantic comedy movies. Now those females would be more unlikely to go and watch the film. Therefore with Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, the traditional segmentation model and from the 4C’s Model we are able to identify our correct and specific target audience.

The Gender we are mainly thinking to target are females. This is because it's mostly females who enjoy Rom-Com's as they give them a fantasy of True Love or how a good if not perfect relationship should be like. The comedy which is added into it is there so that it keeps them entertained.

Though the Traditional Segmentation Table, my group and I were able to identify that we are targeting females in C2, the skilled working Class; D, the working class; and E, where students are placed. The reason we choose these groups is that because students and the working class are the ones who have the time and interest to watch a Rom-Com; where as people who are classified in groups C1, B and A would have more of serious type of like. Those people would rather watch documentaries, which are educational to them.

Whilst looking at the Young & Rubicam's 4C's Model, we tried to identify the qualities and personalities of our target audience. We were able to identify that we would want this opening scene to be targeted at young adults who are/want to be succeders; those who are mainstream and also those who struggle in life but then in the end are able to find their way to success. The reason we choose these three is because we want our audience to link and engage with the characters which would have these qualities.

The Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is there for us to be able to decide why our targeted audience would come to see this film. What would they get out of this? The answer to this is; entertainment, excitement and a topic to talk about with their colleagues.

GEARS Model:

Gender - Mainly Females
Ethnicity - Any
Age - 16-28 year olds
Region - Westernised Society
Socio-Economic Status - Working Class and Students

Analysis of 'Citizen Kane' opening sequence

Citizen Kane - 1941

The opening scene of the film 'Citizen Kane' (1941), leads us through the place where he residents. An old man is seen on his deathbed with a snow globe in his hands which he is clutching tight on. He whispers his last word, "Rosebud", and then dies. The snow globe falls out of his hands and rolls down the steps till it eventually breaks. A nurse then enters, to find his dead body, and then covers his body with a white cover.

The scene begins, with a close up on a ‘No Trespassing’ sign, which already suggests to us viewers that the property behind this sign would be very old and stranded with possibly no life around except maybe some animals. Also this could be a hint of the character to the audience that he is very controlling and does not want anyone to enter his property. The Camera Tilts upwards, travelling up the fence. There are a few cuts from the lower part of the fence to the top of the fence. This can foreshadow the long life of the old man who is about to die behind that fence, as it is about a 20 seconds long shot.

With each passing shot, the camera is inching closer to the only window which has some sort of light visible; and once we reach it, we find the old man on his deathbed. However when we are moving towards that window, we are shown areas of the lonely property, which has no sort of life visible except some monkey’s which are seated on some bars near a lake. This suggests that the old man which lives there is all alone and has no family or friends and is left alone to die. This can also tell the audience that the old man's life is very lifeless, much like the place where he lives in.

Once we reach his deathbed, we are shown images of falling snow, which eventually fades into a snow globe, making the audience believe that the snow was falling inside of the globe. However it could also be an image which the old man was thinking back to as his last memory before death. This tells us a lot about the film itself; that the film could be presented in flashbacks, narrating the old man's life or important events which finally lead him to die alone. A reason why snow was presented is because the winter usually symbolises death and snow symbolises peace or the cold which could mean that the character was cold hearted therefore is now alone.

Then we have a cutaway to an extreme close-up, where the old man whispers his last word, "Rosebud", but no one is there to hear him. Now this could be a location where he lost something very important; the place where he lives; or a the name of a person which is important to him and gave him that snow globe as that is the only object he is holding tight onto during his last moments which means that the snow globe holds an importance in his life.

After he whispers his last word, he passes away and the snow globe falls out of his hand, rolling down the steps and eventually breaking. The snow globe can represent his life which shows that he was a figure very high up, until he started going downhill and eventually died, shown by the globe breaking.

The sound which is played throughout this opening scene is one organ instrument, representing his loneliness.

Initial Ideas for our Film

My group and I, for the initial ideas task created quite a few so that it would give us more of a variety to choose from. Also having a few different ideas helped us develop individual ideas further and into more detail.

First we decided we would look at different genres and then decide on one which one we would like to create the opening of the film onto. Initially we thought, that we should choose the genre ‘Horror’ like we did in our Preliminarily task, but we decided not to go forward with the idea as we would like to try something different. However we still came up with an idea for it which would include a graveyard, some fog and old dangling trees which are conventions of Horror.

After that we looked at different opening sequences of films from a variety of different genres. From all those different openings our first idea was that we would be having a ‘Journey to..’. This would be set out such as that that the main character would be making their way to work/school, which would include her/him getting quickly dressed; then rushing out of the house; maybe then getting on their bike or the public transport or just simply running. The Credit Text would be playing simultaneously at the side as the character processes with their journey.The reason we decided to give a few options within ideas is that so we could explore on them later on.

Another idea of ours included, that it would be based on teenagers and them getting bullied by elder years. Similar to Spider-Man scene, where Peter Parker get bullied for being nerdy in the corridors and cafeteria. However we did not really like this idea as it does not seem to be very eye catching and the audience should be engaged from the very first second of the film. But we thought that we could combine this idea with the ‘Journey to..’ idea and make it a Rom-Com and it would include teenagers or young adults which would make our main target audience around the same age or people in their 20's.

The reason why we thought of a Rom-Com is that, not only could we make the opening scene joyful but also engage the audience as it has a happy feel to it, they would want to pay more attention to it. 

If we are going along with the idea of a Rom-Com then we would be targeting this at young adults which would include people in their 20’s as people around in that age at either starting off their career or going to university. Therefore they would meet a lot of new people daily and also make friends and comedy is always something which people tend to enjoy at that age. Also it for them it is a great conversation starter because it is something positive to talk about. Therefore this age group would be our main target group due to their interests.

Editing Techniques

Continuity Editing

Continuity Editing is when one arranges a series of shots together in an order so that it shows a progression of and event/scene.

Accelerating Time

This technique is used in many films which allows the producers of a film to cut out a large portion of time in order to continue with their story. For example if a character is travelling to a different country/place in the film, the editor would not need to show the whole plane journey but instead only show a few shots which could be the person entering the airport and then a plane landing. By this the audience will understand that the character has travelled.

Expanding Time

Expanding Time is where the editor makes the duration of the video or scene longer than it would be normally. This is there so that the audience would notice a specific detail or object in the frame and also it creates an impact on them.

Cause, Effect and Motivation

When editing the editors must have a clear understanding of human psychology so that theycan portray the actions, events and feelings as realistic as possible so that the audience is able to connect with it.

Insert Shot

An insert shot is a close-up of an action or object in the scene which is not as clear and visible from a wider shot. By using this technique editors are able to draw the attention of the audience to that particular close-up of the object.

Cutaway

The Cutaway shot is which is placed in between a continually flowing action/scene to show a different view.

Relational Editing

This is editing shots together to show comparison for the purpose to analyse a particular content.

Thematic Editing

Unlike other editing techniques, Thematic editing does not really focus on developing a logical sequence. It involves with different images and sequences being edited together on a theme.

Cross Cutting

In this technique we merge together two or more separate scenes which are occurring at the same time.

Example:

Parrallel Cutting

Parrallel Cutting is where two or more storyline are taking place at the same time there