Film openings

In this lesson we had to watch a documentary of opening films and understand different views of peoples knowledge on how films are made exciting for the audience.

Thomas Sutcliffe say's 'films need  to seduce their audience into long term commitment. while there are many types of seduction, the temptation to go for instant arousal is almost irresistible.' The reason this is true is that if you make the first 5 minutes of the film exciting, grabbing the audiences attention it will make them tempted to watch more however according to 'Director Jean Jacques Beineix' there are risks of 'instant arousal' as after the audience have watched these 5 minutes of excitement, the rest of the film may not be as exciting, making the audience bored with the rest of the film.

'Critic Stanley Kauffmann' describes a classic film opening as an establishing shot building up to the main character, for example; first  there will be shots of a building, a window, then a secretary sitting at a desk, a corridor and finally introducing the main character. This is to show that everything is connected and the world is much bigger and important than you think.

A effective title sequence is 'Seven' made by 'Kyle Cooper' this is because it doesn't make the audience feel comfortable rather it makes them feel on edge as your disturbed with the amount of detail shown. It builds anxiety within the audience as it feels as though 'it hit you on the head', unexpected. The title sequence also allows the audience to get a sense of the character- as we can tell that he must by psychotic.

'Orson Welles' didn't get to achieve the opening film he wanted originally 'Touch of Evil' as he wanted no credits or title sequences he wanted to plunge straight into the story however universal studios argued with this idea an added all this features to the film. Welles was disappointed with out come as he believed it ruined the suspense within the audience.

However 'The shinning' was able to create the suspense needed to draw the audiences attention, it started of with a extreme lot shot to show the the car moving from a distance, it then slowly follows the car like a predictor - The audience know that everything about this scene tells you that these people are heading in the wrong direction.