General Codes and Conventions

We have looked at the following films:
Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007)
Bridget Jones' Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001)
The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998)
The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979)
Now You See Me (Louis Leterrier, 2007)
Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee (Shane Meadow, 2009)


we have seen that the order of the idents is often based upon the a budget

Often there is an audio bridge linking the idents to the opening scene, for examples we have looked at the audio bridge was only between the final ident and the opening scene. In three of our examples, Hot Fuzz, Bridget Jones' Diary, and The Warriors, there is an audio bridge between the shot in the opening sequence.

The titles would commonly start with "production company presents" and/or "a director's film".
The order of the next set of titles often starts with the main actor/actress, and then finishing with producer and director.

The titles will often be formatted to fit the genre. For example the titles for Le-Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee, who's titles are cartoon-ish and not serious and have been adapted to fit the genre.

We have noticed that there is often an audio bridge between the final ident and the opening scene with non-diegetic music often fitting the genre, in Bolt we hear music-box like music that continues. Whereas in Bride of Chucky the music adds tension with it's stops and starts [EG]

The mis-en-scene provide exposition on the characters, the type of film and the setting. These are shown throughout our examples, in Le-Donk and Scor-Zay-Ze the mis-en-scene show us that the characters are messy and slobs. In The Truman show the shot is very basic and is cluttered with bottles along the bottom, showing the 'fly on the wall' type style of the film. In the Warriors the mis-en-scene shows the type of area that the film is set in, the graffiti and the grimey floors show that the film is set in a stereotypical downtown area.

In Now you see me a narrative enigma is introduced, with a mysterious figure in a hoodie standing at the end of each character's introduction. In Bridget Jones' Diary, binary opposites are introduced, Bridget's mum lives in the countryside, whereas Bridget herself lives in london. Throughout the opening of Hot fuzz equilibrium is introduced with simon pegg's character being introduced as being the superior cop and excelling at his job.