Opening sequences

As our task was to create an opening sequence we thought it would be good to look at some effective opening sequences, we looked at "Dirty Harry", "Se7en" and "The Usual Suspects". All of these films have effective opening sequences due to Mise-en-scene, Ideology, Sound, Characterisation, Music and Narrative. Also all the things we looked at during our preliminary task.

I believe an opening sequence aims to set the scene and introduce the characters. Whereas a good opening sequence also draws the audience in and sets an exciting plot for the rest of the film. In the Films "Dirty Harry", " Se7en" and " The Usual Suspects"the directors use many different dramatic techniques to create a very good opening sequence. We will take everything into account to help us create the best opening sequence we can.

Mise-en-scene... is every detail of each shot, for example if you stopped the camera on each frame then you would be able to tell what genre it was from props, set, actors, lighting, and costume. Basically it is a mixture between continuity and realism, that you know exactly whats going on in the frame. We will try to remember mise-en-scene in our opening sequence and pay attention to every detail.

Ideology... is the use of either a moral, political or social message portrayed to the viewers through the opening sequence. The ideology in Dirty Harry is that the Cops are the noble good guys and hat the Killer is obviously the bad guy. Good vs evil is the most basic ideology and that is shown in all of the opening sequences we looked at.

Sound... is split up into non-diagetic and diagetic sounds, Diagetic sounds are the natural sounds heard by the camera eg talking, whereas non diagetic sounds are the sounds edited in eg sirens or church bells. The sounds used in opening sequences help portray emotions and can be used effectively for suspense or humour. In Dirty Harry this is used when the camera scrolls down the list of dead officers with the sound of solemn church bells in the background.

Characterisation... is how the director wants you to see each character, this is tied in with ideology as a good guy would usually be clean in a suit with smart hair where as a bad guy would have messy hair in messy clothes. This is shown in Dirty Harry as Harry (good guy) is dressed smart and the killer (bad guy) is very messy. It also helps the audience make a bond with the characters.

Music... is used to create suspense and again help emotions become more strong. In Dirty Harry the music when you see the killer is very sinister, quiet and random off beat. Whereas Harry is shown with powerful regular beat music showing he is the good guy.

Narrative... Narrative is normally used in opening sequences from the heroes perspective but within our opening sequence we will be looking to use no narrative to keep the audience guessing, just a soundtrack and action.

Genre

Before choosing a certain genre to base our film around we looked at many different ones to see what we liked the best and what we thought we could do the best. These are some of the different genres we looked at;

Comedy... is a very vague genre as there is more than one type of comedy eg slapstick, black comedy, comedy horror, Rom-com and many more. Obviously with all of these different types of comedy the primary purpose is to make you laugh, with many different secondary purposes. My favourite comedy films and arguably my favourite films of all time are Anchorman: the legend of Ron Burgundy and Superbad, these are both quite adult humour and are very rude in some places, which is often the case in the comedy genre. Film isn't the only place were comedy is but you also get live comedy (stand up) and T.V comedy which is not usually as rude as film. Comedy began along time ago and was around during Roman times and probably before that in the form of plays.

Horror... is made to make the viewers feel feer, terror and obviously horror. They often have the story about death and have a definite "baddy". Alot of horrors contain supernaturall beings such as Demons and people who are possessed. The genre began in 1890-1900 with the early black and white films that were based on books such as "Frankenstein". Horror is now one of the fastest growing genres. A great example of a Horror/Thriller film is Paranormal Activity which is a low budget film made as a fake documentary about a haunting in a house, that is all shot on one hand held camera.



Action... films are very fast tempo and fast flowing with lots of action scenes, they are usually very high budget with all the explosions and special effects. They are often the highest grossing films such as "James Bond: Gold Finger" and "Mission impossible 4.0" which are films in a series of lots of other films, that's another trait of action films. It always contains a handsome male and beautiful female that he saves and they then fall in love.





Romance... is a very popular genre that is based on Love. Often Romance and Comedy are mixed together to make Rom-Com. They are highly emotional and based on true story's often and the main character is nearly always Leonardo DiCaprio for example "Romeo and Juliet" and "Titanic". Again this genre has been around for centuries.

Gangster... movies are about criminals often in a Criminal Group/Gang hence the name Gangster. The gangs are often based around the Italian Mafia and in particular notorious individuals such as Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. They are often shot in Dark colours and are sometimes even Black and White. Some great gangster films are "Scarface", "The Godfather" and "The Untouchables".




Western... is a genre that is telling a story in the late 1900's in the wild west of America. The Western started off as westerns, and eventually developed into cop films such as "Dirty Harry". They often show the views of honour and sacrifice for the greater good and later showing the brutality of the American West. It is about the problems faced with social and technological changes during the expansion to the West which is showed in the early "Cowboys and Indians"films.




After looking at all these different genres and a couple more like Thriller and Fantasy we decided to make a film in the style a a 1950's Gangster film. We thought we would do it in Black and white to look authentic, the ideas we have are smokey poker room, silhouettes and a sinister sound track.