Sherlock Holmes

I've mentioned before that i want to use a mystery novel (preferably Sherlock Holmes) in one of my shots, this was perfectly timed because the new Sherlock Holmes film came out and me and a friend went to see it. it has both my genres in it + action and the very first opening scene was a chase scene in which the characters identity is hidden just like my opening.

because its the first movie some people don't know what the actor who's playing Holmes looks like, me being one of these people i didn't know what was going on in the opening, to me it looked like a scruffy man being chased by the police but it turned out to be Holmes running in front of the police to stop the main bad guy from doing something. I'm doing something like this in my opening, I'm making the "Good guys" look like the bad guys

the mystery element of the film kept me on the edge of my seat through-out, and by the end i was actually convinced the main bad guy could use magic, then all was revealed by Holmes towards the end only to be left with a cliff hanger ending about a second bad guy that made appearances in the film. there are a lot of times when your sat watching thinking "what on earth is Holmes doing" and then at the end he shows you why he did it, it keeps the audience hooked.

the comedy was clever, one of my favourite parts that made me laugh was a giant french bad guy who's out to get Holmes picks up a huge hammer used on making a ship, Holmes grabs a tiny hammer and there's a long shot allowing the audience to see the difference in size between both Holmes and the bad guy and there hammers, in frustration Holmes just throws his hammer at the man and does no damage what so ever and ends up almost getting squished by the boat-in-progress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQbmFAE5WI

the hammer scene starts at 1:43 in the trailer above, the embedding was disabled.
the trailer below is slightly different but i could embed it so i'll post both

More ideas

I'm sticking with the mystery comedy theme, I've got lots of ideas for it, but I'm trying to think of the best way to do it.
i want to start the opening with some fast editing, like on hot fuzz with the exaggerated whooshing noises when he moves something and the fast zooming in and out. i want to do a close-up shot of someone typing somthing stereotypical for the mysteriy genre

i plan on doing very slap stick comedy, i want to keep the opening serious up untill about 1 minute where something happens to ruin the serious atmosphere, im thinking about doing a tracking shot following 2 charaters down a road chasing somthing (not revieled yet but probably a friends pet dog thats escaped.) and one of them runs into a lampost but the camera keeps moving untill the lampost is out of the shot.

im going to be doing the titles mixed in with the shots, so when i said about doing a shot with someone typeing on a laptop, make the credit appear as the person types one letter at a time like a type writer

(embedding disabled)
Hot fuzz part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpeYvuV5J_I

i plan on doing transitions similar to how they do it in hot fuzz aswell, people walking past and the screen changes as they do so, that kind of thing.

Video openings

I've been watching some video openings for ideas for my own video i've watched some on DVD's at home but these are some of the ones i found on youtube.



This is the opening to the pink panther, i won't be doing something like this because its all animation but its still good because of the way they show the titles so they mix in with animated action, i could do something like this in my own video!



This is the opening to James bond - Golden eye. its a typical Bond opening with all the figures as silhouettes, guns and explosions, again not somthing i could do easily, it is possible with my own softwear to do somthing like this but it would take a long time, you have to do masking frame by frame and it takes forever to do just a minutes worth of clip. I can do the clips overlapping and fading through though!



not a practical opening, it goes on for a very long time before the titles start, but it fits the films genre (Comady/musical) and hooks the audiance in straight away, introduce the main charater and does it all through song! again, this isn't a very good for my video because its long and i can't do musical things

i watched Titanic aswell, but the embedding was dissabled so heres the URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPQYUVvh2xc

This opening is really simple, its just a montage of old style videos of titanic setting sail for the final time. the opening doesn't need to be anymore then that because its powerful enough as it is, Titanic is the most famous ship wreck in the world so most people know what is going to happen. i could do a simple opening, but it would have to be something people could recognize easily, i could do a shelf of Sherlock Holmes books, or something else most people know about