Similarities and Differences in Film Openings

For this task I will be looking at the similarities and differences in film openings so I can get an idea of what's involved in film openings. This will give me a general overview of what film openings consist of.

Opening Sequence Watched	Length	Genre	Editing	Titles	Setting	Narrative	Colours	Characters	Sound
Drive	2.34	Thriller, Crime	Fade to shot transitions, slow paced, continuous, pink hand written font	Main Actor at 0.06, Title at 0.16, Director at 2.26	In a car driving through a city and in an apartment	Not much of the story is given away as the main character is just driving most of the time and in the middle of the sequence he drops his bag off in his apartment but the audience doesn’t know what’s going on	Dark – Low key lighting – night time	We only see two characters throughout the opening -Ryan Gosling as the main character and a girl walking out a lift	There is no diegetic sound or sound effects included. However, it includes music the whole way through and within it, it contains dialogue.
The Shinning	2.59	Thriller	Slow paced, continuous, bright blue font in capitals	Institution at beginning, Director at 1.21, Main Actor at 1.26, Title at 1.36	Open spaced mountain area	The camera just follows a car so not much of the story is given away so the audience don’t know what’s going on	Quite light – day time – natural light & colours	We don’t see the characters during the opening	It includes non-diegetic spooky/daunting music throughout the whole opening which makes the view feel quite intimidated
Dawn of The Dead	2.34	Horror	Transitions of TV fuzzing & flashes to black, fast paced, discontinuous, red capital font that smears away as blood, old fashioned overlays and low quality to make it look like random footage found	Institution at beginning, Title at 0.10, Main Actor at 0.16, Director at 2.29	Public places where the is disruption and conferences	The opening shows the devastation that the situation has caused and shots of zombies, people shooting and speeches as conferences and news reports	Dark colours – red & black – flashes of light	Lots of people & no specific main characters -  the public, zombies, news reporters and the military	Upbeat music is used for most of the opening which says about being scared of something coming around. Diegetic sounds of people screaming and people speaking about what’s happening are used at the beginning, and throughout there are sound effects of people taking pictures, gun shots, and a TV fuzz sound.

Drive

The Shinning

Dawn of The Dead

By doing this work it has helped me get an insight of what different films include in their opening sequences to introduce the type of film it is to the audience. I have learnt that there isn’t an exact, specific way of making a film opening as they all appear very different to each other in terms of narrative, setting and editing. Yet they almost all involve these features so I must include them in some way when it comes to creating my film opening.