Film Openings Preparation.

 Over the past few weeks in class we have been looking at a range of film openings to help us with the preparation for our openings. Each film opening that we looked at was carefully analysed and we looked for the many conventions that came up in each of them to help us think about what we wanted/should have in our own openings to make it effective.

One of the many film openings that we looked at was from the film 'Trainspotting'.

Promotional poster from the film 'Trainspotting'

The opening of the film introduces us to each character, from the beginning it is clear that they are white, twenty something's who are a lower class in Scotland and are Heroin addicts.

Mise En Scene

In terms of Mise en scene, the main part of the opening is set in an abandoned house with ripped wallpaper and little or no furniture. It is clear from this that they are squatters and do not care about where they live, all they are focussed on is the heroin that they take daily.

Camera

A low angle is used to show them injecting heroin into each other. It shows the man injecting them as a very big person as he ultimately has their lives in his hands. A long shot is also used to show the bad condition of the building, including the baby that is sat on surrounded by the addicts.

Other things that I noted when watching the film opening were:

• The sub-genres of the film are Drugs, Comedy, Crime and Drama.
• The target audience is probably mature teenagers or young adults, due to the topic in the film and language and sexual references in the opening.

From watching the opening of the film we decided that we didn't want to include drugs in our film, and although it was an amazingly filmed opening it would be too hard to top. This was also because the topics in the film are quite hard to get right, although we did really like the chase scene at the beginning and decided to use a chase scene at the beginning of our film. 

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The next film we looked at was 'The Shining' which is a phsychological thriller based on the iconic book by author Stephen King, the opening to this film was extremely different to Trainspotting. Instead of including people in the opening, the whole three minutes were of a car driving through the mountains to finally reach the destination of a hotel. Although it was very simple the opening held a lot more tension that Trainspotting because of the simplicity of it. It also included a eerie song at the beginning which kept the audience on the edge of their seats thinking that something was going to happen.

Screenshot from the opening scene of the film 'The Shining'

Mise En Scene

For Mise En Scene, not a lot was going on in the opening. The only aspects of Mise En Scene was the setting in the mountains, the car and the hotel. Other smaller parts of this was the lighting used which was high key.

Camera

In terms of camera, a high angle shot was used to show the car looking small and vulnerable, this hints that the people in the car are the victims of what happens in the film. This angle also shows a juxtaposition of the small car to the large mountains.

Other things that I noted when watching the film opening were:

• The use of no narration puts emphasis on the main character. The hotel.
• The target audience was probably adults aged 20+ from the styling of the opening.

When it came to how much this opening had influenced our plan, there wasn't really anything in the opening that we decided to use and change for our own. Although it was an very clever opening because it don't give anything away at all, it was too far away from what we had wanted to do with ours.