Codes and Conventions of film openings

Most film openings start off by showing the audience the company logo that made the film. In the scary movie (0:01) which you will see below, this shows the audience that Dimension Films made scary movie and the sequels.

However different films are owned by different prouction companies, for example Legally Blonde is owned by the company MGM, here is a picture to show you.

 So depending on what film you want to watch, not all of the production companies will be the same.

The genre conventions for the films vary depending on what film you decide to watch, for example if you watch a horror film the audience would expect to see lots of blood/gore and a lot of murders and theres usually a serial killer. Another example is a comedy film, if you were to watch a comedy the audience would expect to see little bits of humour and maybe a bit of slapstick to make them laugh.

The images above are both movie posters from different genres of films, the first poster is of a horror called The Silent House and the second poster is of a comedy called Mr Beans Holliday. By looking at both movie posters, you can see theres a lot of differences between the two genres. In the horror poster the backgrounds black with a red title, also the image is of a girl with blood on her shirt looking scared while holding a latern, this shows that the actual film could be quite scary and broody with bits of blood/gore and violence in it. Unlike the second poster which shows Mr bean stepping out of a train about to go on holiday, in the second poster the background is of a beach with yellow sand and a blue sky and the character Mr Bean looks happy, this shows the audience thats there's going to be a lot of laughter in the film whic is what you would expect when watching a comedy film.

Im most films, whether it's an action, comedy or horror you will see that they seem to have the same actors/actresses playing different characters, for example Carmen Electra has been in different films playing different characters. The 2 images above show her in two different films, in the first image she is in the horror/comedy Scary Movie where she plays a young woman who is about to be killed. In the second image she is in the comedy film Meet The Spartans where she plays the wife of a warrior who is about to go on an adventure to battle.

The camera conventions are the different camera shots used when the film is shown.

The establishing shots for films can be different, for example in the image which is from the film Fred The Movie, the camera shot used is a "birds eye view" because the camera is looking down on the houses so people feel like they are looking down from the sky. However in the image on the right wihch is from the film Scary Movie the camera shot used is a long shot. It is a long shot because the audeince is able to see everything in the shot, the house, the swing and the surroundings.

2000-Scary Movie-Keenan Ivory Wayans.

2008-Meet The Spartans-Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer

2010-Fred The Movie-Clay Weiner

2007-Mr Beans Holiday-Steve Bendelack

2010-The Silent House-Gustavo Hernández