http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/gone-girl/
Title Design: Neil Kellerhouse
Editor: Kirk Baxter
Cinematography: Jeff Cronenweth
Music: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
We've been set a task to analyse an opening title sequence (OTS) from a website called Art of the Title (artofthetitle.com). This website has nearly 600 opening title sequences for the public to see. Most with a detailed analysis of the footage and the background story of it. The OTS I've chose to analyse is Gone Girl (2014), this however, doesn't currently have any analysis on Art of the Title. I have not seen the full film but Gone Girl is an American psychological thriller. It is about a man, Nick Dunne, who is the primary suspect in the sudden disappearance of his wife, Amy Pike. It is David Fincher (the Director's) highest grossing film, fetching a commercial success of over $368 million (£244 million).
(1.,2. and 3. in SlideShare attached.) The first twenty-seven seconds of the opening title sequence are the logos and names of the film coorperations and companies, saying how they 'present..', these in include 20th Century Fox Film Coorperation and Recency Enterprises which is a Los Angeles-based entertainment company. This is a good thing to start off with as you almost know it'll be a good film if it's got these big names injected into the making of this film. It then goes on on to say 'A David Fincher Film' (4. in SlideShare attached) again giving the audience more reassurance they want to watch this movie more if they know other David Fincher films but alsoslightly unfrosts the glass of what genre the film is as Fincher seems to predominately produce sinister films to films that also make you think such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network and Alien 3. Whilst the text of 'A David Fincher Film' is on the screen the non-diegetic sound of a voice over starts playing. A male voice 'When I think of my wife, I always think of her head, I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brains, trying to get answers. The primal questions of any marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?' This is during a large male hand is stroking a young blonde women's head. (5. in SlideShare attached) When he says 'trying to get answers' the women looks up, slight to the right of the camera and remains like this until he's finished his dialogue. (6. in SlideShare attatched).This is a very sinister start as we already know this man must have an obsession with his wife but also imagines himself 'cracking her lovely skull' this is a disturbing thing to say as your wife should be somebody you love and 'cracking her lovely skull and unspooling her brains' would be instantaneous death. He ends the sentence, however, with 'trying to get answers' this indicated she is hiding thing from him but as he sounds like somebody likely to be diagnosed with Psychopathy it is likely he may also have Paranoia and she may really have no answers for him to find.
(7. in SlideShare attached) The screen then goes on to give us two more names (presumably the main actors) and then tells us to the title of the film on a blue tinted port or bay framed sea scape. (8. in SlideShare attached). After this there is derelict looking parts of a small town that looks likely to have gone into decline without rejuvenation. Each place we see in each shot there's a new name of the cast or crew. After fourteen pictures of fourteen places have been showed we pan up to a village clock face of the (9. in SlideShare attached) time saying five minutes to seven (presumably in the morning based on the colour of sky behind). Then going onto a man (I'd guess in his 30s) standing outside his house after just putting the bins out reading the time, looking around his street and sighing. As he walks back into his house the bottom left of the screen has text saying
'JULY 5TH
THE MORNING OF'.
The opening title sequence ends on this. (10. in SlideShare attached).
Throughout eerie but forbidding music has been played throughout with a low tempo but quite a high tempo this adds to the tension but also as it's quite quiet makes us an audience feel vulnerable to what's about to happen.
This whole OTS has introduced two characters, the setting, the name of film, those who produced and directed, some of the cast and crew and also given a general feeling or atmosphere of how the film is likely to progress. I think it has been carried out and executed very well.
Reflective Comment:
I am really proud of this work, it took me quite a long time but I think reads well and is easy to follow of which bit I meant by using the embedded SlideShare of which bit of the opening title sequence I meant. I'm looking forward to using this OTS as inspiration for when we do our real Film Noir styled OTS.
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