Opening Sequence

4th November 2010                                               Miss lecointe

Objective: To be able to identify the generic convection's of an opening sequence within a film in particular.

Opening sequence is presenting the title, key production and cast members through a few scenes. Films make opening scene for their films because they need to introduce their audience to what the film will be about. This is important because they need to show their audience to many things such as what actors are going to be in the film. In the opening sequence we see the location of where the film will take place. This will help the audience to come up with a genre of the film. For example in a dark forest, the genre is likely to be thriller. But in the day time in the city will most likely be romance. This will help me in the opening of my film because by using the correct conventions of a thriller film, my audience will be able to decide the correct genre of my film; this will make my film a success.

Generic convection's of a thriller:
- Low key lighting
- Sound
- Straight cut
- Opening credits
- Establishing shot
- Lighting
- Set the genre/characters and setting location

We then watched the following of the two opening sequences from the films 'sex and the city' and 'twlight'. We had to identify the following points:
- Narrative of the film
- The characters
- The location

For 'Sex and the city' the narrative is about romance. Before this came out as a film, it started as a programme. So if you didn't know, Carries (the main character) put the audience to speed about how they got into the position they're in now. Her and her friends life goal was to find love so this tells us that the narrative romance. But before the narrative came location. The location is new york city. In the opening sequence, all the main characters were shown. The credits are sparkly, pink and bright. This shows that this film is aimed at females and it gives us an idea of how the characters personality are.

For 'Twlight' the genre is thriller. The narrative of the film suggested that something bad is going to end up happening to the girl because of the sudden chase of the deer. The location was a small town near a forest. This is a generic convention as it is an isolated habitat which gives it a more mysterious feel. There is a voiceover during the opening sequence which tells us what happened before and how the character got in the position she is in now. This vioceover allows the audience to understand more what is going on. Bella (the main character) is going to live with her dad; we know this from the voiceover narration.









The opening sequence of my choice is my bloody valentine 3d. Here is the video of the beginning of the film:


From watching the opening sequence of this film i can tell that the genre of this film is horror/thriller. The narrative of the film firstly shows numerous newspapers with different headlines with images relating to whats happening. As the newspapers were changing past each other, there was voices about the headlines; some were news reports and others were people encouraging people to stay calm. This shows us that something isn't right and something is going to go wrong in the film. The location of the film is in a hospital at night. The characters is a man that has just  come out of a comma and is going to kill people, we know this because there is blood on his shirt. This will help me in my own thriller film because its shown me that there is other ways to give the narrative instead of just dialogue.