Film Openings 05.01.09

For our first lesson back we watched a BBC 2 documentary on film openings. This was very helpful with thinking of ideas for our own coursework. From the documentary I learnt that movies should grab your attention from the beginning. However, this could be a risk because if you start off too dramatic you always have to ask the question what to do next or where to go from there? This left me questioning, is it better to start of dramatic or go into a movie slowly and then build up to the drama? However this question was soon answered further down into the documentary.

The beginning of the movie establishes the main characters, notion of setting and location and should give you enough to keep you tantalized so that you don’t lose interest. The opening of a film must give you an insight to what is going on but not tell you to much, making you want to continue watching to understand.

The documentary also talked about a ‘Classic Opening’. A classic opening to a movie begins with an establishing long distance shot of a view. Usually a city or location people are familiar with. The camera then pans up a building, zooms through a window onto a desk. From such a short space of time we know where the film takes place and the occupation of the main character. A classic opening is a prime example of the opening of a film leading the audience into the film as smoothly as possible.

The documentary gave me an idea for our thriller such as Orson Wells A Touch of Evil. Orson Wells wanted to open the film with no credits, no title and no music, just the diegetic sound on set. However Universal Studios added music and flash titles and totally changed the mood.

A technique I particularly liked was ‘a favourite trick of film Noir’. This is when the movie starts at the end, this simply means the first scene is the last scene. This is similar to the new movie Seven Pounds with Will Smith. At the beginning of the film we see Will Smith on the phone to the emergency services for a suicide, when asked who he replies himself. At the end of the film this scene is repeated again.

We then went on to watch past students thriller film openings.

The first film opening we watched was called Blasphemy and it looked very professional. The slow shots, zooms and tracking slowly takes in the audience. There was a wide variation of shots, ranging from long shots at the beginning to close-ups in the end. This group borrowed their idea from the title sequence of the film Seven, which matched-cuts between credits and graphic images with gave the audience an insight to the characters mentality, although we never actually see the character. All the way through close-up shots and point of view shots were used.
In Blasphemy the film opening reveals the main theme of the movie which is secret religious cults. There is an religious iconography all the way through.

The second film opening we watched was Essex Road. The police officer falls asleep and faded into the sequence. Match cutting is used to flash to evidence after we see it on the table, from this we know that when we see the girl running she is running to her death. The beginning switches between images and the title sequence. The music is loud and dramatic. The mise-en-scene tells us he was a policeman. We are made to identify with police officer because he’s taking the case seriously. The opening makes us question was the policeman chasing her or was he putting the events together. This leaves us in suspense and makes the audience want to continue watching.