Moar research

If you must know I'm doing this now instead of my film because my laptop died, it's currently sitting on the kitchen table while I back up the hard drive, and it will be on the kitchen table for the next 6 hours or so. In the meantime I re-recorded the shots we needed (and added some more) in compressed MotionJPEG format. We now have 24 shots and they're coming out slightly sharp and pixelated but apart from that they're much easier to work with than before.

On Thursday Ms. Parish said we needed more research, Jonny had already done this piece on black & white film, and the commentary for these films, we needed to do more, and it had to be analytical. I have decided to analyse the opening to Perfect Dark Zero. One could make the argument that despite it really being an 'espionage thriller' game it's also a sci-fi game because it's:
Set in the future.
and
Features many futuristic gadgets which could occupy the realm of 'science fiction'.

What's conventional?
Silhouettes establish that the main character is a woman, she's also mysterious because from the opening all we see is her eyes and the silhouette which demonstrates her woman-ly figure. The 'femme fatale' character is a recurring theme in the espionage thriller genre. The most obvious parallel being the opening to the Goldeneye James Bond film. There's probably more to it than that because Rare (the developer of Perfect Dark) also made Goldeneye (the game, it's considered to be one of the best) so would have had some substantial experience in the genre.
Guns and specifically bullets, the camera follows the bullet as it shoots from one gun into another, the gun swivels and shoots the same bullet across and it disappears off-screen, the trail of the bullet forms the horizon for a new platform upon which a hovercraft appears. The imagery lingers briefly on those symbols because they represent the genre. Hovercrafts as objects aren't particularly exciting or futuristic, it's the way in which one is displayed as some sort of holograph which then explodes into a sharp blue mess which gives it those properties.
There's a blue explosion which follows the bullet, it anchors the atmosphere of the trailer as fast-paced and of course because explosions are conventional.

What's unconventional?
The very fact that such an opening sequence even exists, I'm writing this behind my brother who just bought and is playing Splinter Cell: Double Agent, it's still part of that espionage thriller genre but it's very different because the focus is on stealth, not explosions and clichés. Splinter Cell drops the player right into the game as early as possible, the narrative and the world becomes interactive from the start. Perfect Dark introduces the genre upfront with that video. And both games have that 'helping guide', in Splinter Cell it's Lambert in Perfect Dark it's Daniel Carrington (I think), either way the spy always has someone behind them speaking to them through an earpiece or radio or whatever. This character would be Vladimir Propp's 3rd character type - the helper who aids the hero.
Title sequences don't happen often in games, I know Fable has one, though I don't think it's a feature unique to British games.
The techno soundtrack is fast-paced to keep with the atmosphere, but for an espionage game I would expect it to be subtle, possibly classical music.

I'll upload a better, high-definition version of the Perfect Dark opening sequence when my laptop is better, after I've edited the main task. The sequence I've already uploaded has bad sound.