Analysis of a Film Title Sequence

Hey hey! This blog will portray an analysis of an existing opening title sequence with detailed points of the purpose of it and how media language is used to create meaning.
The title sequence I have chosen to use as an example in this blog is from the film 'Land of the Lost' as shown below -
http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00137-Land_of_the_Lost
The purpose of this title sequence is to promote a film with strange and fantastical elements based on the music and the various images used in the background. The images show everyday items such as a telephone box and an ice cream van (to show its a 'Land of the Lost'), creatures such as dinosaurs and alien-looking beings, and multiple locations such as a jungle, desert and a volcano. It also promotes some comedy elements when an animation of 3 people (the main stars of the film) running away from strange creatures is shown and one of the group trips over while running. This happens when a certain actor's name (Danny McBride) is shown on-screen which hints at Danny McBride's character being a rather clumsy and funny sort of person, keeping up with the tradition of all of his characters in previous films being this sort of character.
The text shown when crediting stars of the film and the people who helped make it consists of a funny sort of font. When certain letters are used in the names (such as 'I', 'L', 'N' or 'S'), the ends, beginnings or sometimes, the whole letter is stretched out so it goes off-screen. An example of this can be seen in this image -

This sort of writing continues the portrayal of strange and weird elements used in the rest of the opening sequence.

Many times throughout the sequence, the camera view tilts and spins through strange items and locations. This is a good example to show that this film is going to be a rather twisted and out of control film with a lot of peculiar and fictional elements.

The music in the sequence also helps create a confusing and odd atmosphere for the film's audience. It has a jungle vibe to it along with some dramatic and out-of-this-world parts which you would normally associate with sci-fi films that feature aliens. The audience would most likely associate this music to a fantasy comedy action film.

Preliminary Task

My First Blog

Welcome to my blog. As I go through my project of creating and editing an opening to a Crime film, along with Luke Bravin and Jason Southern, I will post what we have done, how we've done it and other posts that show our influences, our props and our ideas
Before we started our Crime film project, my group was given a preliminary continuity task that involved filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character where they share a few lines of dialogue. The task was to help show that we can demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. However, we accidentally forgot about the 180-degree rule while filming. Fortunately, it was only a practice project so it wasn't too big a problem. It also helped us to learn from what we've done so we could improve our skills in the next project.
After the preliminary task, we went on to start our main task; creating and editing the titles and opening of a new Crime fiction film. It was to last two minutes, have original video and audio material and if music was used, it needed to be non-copyrightable.
Our Crime opening was about a drug addict called Jimmy (Luke B) who is kidnapped and interrogated by an unknown drug lord for the location of Jimmy's drug dealer supplier. Surviving the interrogation, he runs home where he tells his drug dealer, Big Arth (Luke M), about what happened. This leads Big Arth and Jimmy to go out and save their supplier, similar to the plot of the film 'Pineapple Express'.
The project was quite successful. We were able to record some good pieces of footage, managed to find non-copyrightable music that went well with the footage, and we used effects well (eg. black and white effects). However, our final piece was over two minutes long which meant we had to cut out many scenes to get it as close to the maximum time limit as possible.
Finally, we had to create a blog stating our progress through the projects. It charts my progress throughout the projects, referring to my research and planning, construction of my footage, my influences, my evaluation and more.
I hope you enjoy my blog.