Film Openings : Professional Openings...

For our final foundation production we have the task of creating the opening two minutes of a film. We must come up with an overall film idea and from there decide how much we feel we want to inform the audience within the opening, think about the shots we want to include, the music, how many characters if any at all, whether we want non-digentic or digentic sound, whether we want any dialogue, how many opening titles we need to include. Therefore I have been researching professional film openings to start getting some ideas together of what I would maybe want to include in my opening.

Juno- Jason Reitman

The first opening I decided to focus on was "Juno" a 2007 romantic comedy directed by Jason Reitman. The reason why I focused on this opening was because of how unique it is. I think it is firstly very effective how it takes real life footage and changed to the effect of a comic within a split second and then once the opening titling had ended changes back to real life footage. Another thing that really attracted me is how simple each aspect of the opening is, yet it the creation of it was very in-depth. I also thought that the fact that the images "drawn" behind the main character were pre-set up for shots that are used within the film, making me think it would look effective to use a setting for my opening that I go back to within the film at least once. In terms of sound, again it is a simplistic use where one song is used throughout, this woks really well for this opening as it does not take the focus away from the comic opening, however I think for my opening in order to keep the audience interested I am going to use dialogue as well as non-digentic sound. I have taken from viewing this opening that simple can be very effective, not to over complicate my opening but to focus on a key location or character for my opening.

Se7en - David Fincher

Another opening I have decided to focus of is "Se7en" a 1995 crime thriller directed by David Fincher. Firstly the first opening shot of the book, I thought was really effective how a simple book is the main object of this opening, and all is focused around this book. I thought that the extreme close up shots that are used, are also very effective and in my opening I would like to include a few extreme close up shots, I also would like to use a prop such as Se7en uses the book, through my opening which I keep referring back to, I am thinking maybe a case file if I go down the path of a detective/crime/thriller genre. I also chose to focus on this opening because of the title sequence and how effective the font is, before I had not thought that even the font of the titles can create an effect, I am therefore going to make sure that for my opening I ensure that I have focused on each aspect not just the actual content but also the font style and colour. This is a unique opening as it does not involve a character (apart from their hands) but uses objects to inform the audience and attract them to carry on watching the film. Overall I think that this is a very effective opening, again it is not an over complicated opening just very effective, as the audience it makes me want to carry on watching the film if only just to find out who is the character behind the hands!