Film Openings
A fillm openings is the first scene of a movie, usually only a few minutes long. Depending on which type of opening the producer chooses, it can consist of; introduce the main character, establish the background story, establish the setting, establish context/allude to conflict, establish tone, and create mechanisms for storytelling.
Introduce the main character:Split
The scene begins with a sloom zoom onto the main character listening to everybody elses conversations around her. Then, her friends are seen talking about her, giving a quick background stroy for the audience. Finally, towards the end of the scene the camera is constantly on her showing the audience who she is with expression and emotions.
Establish the background story:Us
The openigs scene of Us uses typed information for the viewer to read as well as information distributed from a television to help the audience understand what the movie will be about. In addition the opening scene is a flashback of what happened to create the conflict of the rest of the film.
Establish the setting:28 weeks later
This zombie apocalypse movie film opening introduces the conflict of the zombies immediately. What makes this film opening fit the category of establishing the setting? The mian idea of the movie is already known by the auidence, and little almost no information is given about any characters. The use of establishing and long shots give the viewers an idea of where the character is and how in the rural area there is nowhere to hide and it is impossible to escape from the zombies.
Establish context/Allude to conflict:Jaws
This openings scene consists of a woman going for a swim and never coming back out of the water again. The scene demosntartes the conflict by using the point of view of the shark when attacking the woman. Specific music and sound is used to create tension, for example the silence before and after the shark attack happens as well as the spooky, dark sounds when the sahkr is about to attack.
Establish tone:Scream
The entire purpose of this scene of the opening is to creat the mood of the entire movie. Using specific shots and angles, for example shots from the outside window looking into the house, incorporating shots from behind the character as if somebody is about to jump out, and the use of close ups for the audience to feel what the charcter is feeling. The use of specific sounds pulled this whole scene together, from the increasing speed of the dark tone of the music to using a leif motif of the phone ringing, in addition editing techniques, speeding up cuts as the tension increases
contiously increases the heartbeat of the audience, the whole openings is just the appending death of a character which graspas the audiences attention.
Create Mechanisiams for storytelling:28 days later
The entire film opening uses dull colors and establishes the spooky genre. It creates a tone of darkness and emptiness as the lonely man walks trhough the empty streets of London. The shots are mainly long shots which help to establish the setting, there are barely any cuts, and it seems as if the audience will be going on a journey with the only character seen so far in the movie.
Even though these are all types of different ways to go for a film opening in the case of the horror genre the most effective ways to start a horror movie is by establishing the tone and alluding to the conflict of the story. The best examples of this are...
IT
The openigs scene for IT lets the audience know what the genre is right away by using a darker tone of lighting and music. In this specific scene the rain helps allude to the viwers that something bad is about to happen, which it does. At the very end of the scene the reason of conflict is introduced.
Halloween
The opening of this movie is very unique, it is mainly a point of view shot of the person who responsible for the conflict. The genre is immediately recognized due to the dark music and the obvious killing, this helps set the tone for the rest of the movie as well as the killer, making him already feared and ruthless, as for the end of the scene it showed the killer to be just a young boy.
No comments:
Post a Comment