Film Opening Analysis

Se7en:

We watched the opening sequence to the film Seven, the genre of this film was a psychological thriller. There were lots of camera cuts. The sequence was fast, flashy and had dark lighting. This effect created curiosity and a nervous feeling. I thought that it this film opening was good because it was not clear to the audience what was going on so it made them want to watch more, this is the effect you want to create with the audience in the opening sequence of a film. The credits were merged into the genre which worked really well, this is something we need to bare in mind when we come to editing as if the credits don't match the genre it can take concentration off of whats going on.

In our production we are planning on having camera cuts like in the opening sequence of Seven.


Face-Off:

During our lessons we also watched the opening of Face-Off, this was a really interesting film opening to watch as it used very clever shots, i.e. as if when watching your looking through a target aim on a gun. The use of edited colour in this opening i thought was really effective and made the audience feel slight tension before even knowing what was going on, location and who was involved, etc. When watching the opening it flicks between one man with a gun or some kind of weapon, you are aware if this because of the shots used like explained above. Then the other flick is onto a man and his young son on a carousel. Then the characters came into sight of each other but at a distance where the weapon holding character could see the man and his son but the man and the son could not see the character with the weapon. This is a good use of curiosity, suspension and tension. During the opening sequence there is a shooting, the character with the weapon shots the young son of the other man. This creates suspicion and draws the audience in to watch the rest of the film. I thought that this film opening was particularly good, so in our film we used the idea of the colour and how it was edited so in our flash backs we tried to create the same effect with the colour in our production.