Studying Film Openings

Today we learned about the importance of film openings, in order to do that we had to watch a 30 minute documentary.. I must say it was pretty dull and boring! But hey, i managed to get through it and it actually taught me quite a few things that I didn’t know before, it also gave me a better understanding on the importance of film opening.

In order for us to watch the documentary and not sleep through it, we got a set of question to answer on it.. This showed that we actually benefited from watching the documentary.

I learned that film directors spend a lot of their time planning and filming the opening sequence of a movie so that it could be at its best! Plus the whole film relies on the beginning! If the audience are pulled in, and get interested right from the beginning, then their most likely to stay till the end, they might even come back to watch it. :)

I wouldn’t want to bore you and go through all the questions, instead il talk you through some of them. :)

What is it meant by “a favourite trick of film noir” what is the trick?

An example of film noir is black and white and a gangster movie, film noir is basically a term used to describe stylish Hollywood movies. The trick is to start the movie of with the ending, this makes the audience very interested and it makes them question their selves about why and what happened.

What does critic Stanley Kauffmann describe as a classic opening?

Well a classic opening would be establishing the location and what is in it.

What does Thomas Sutcliffe mean when he says "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." 

Well this basically means that by the end of the opening scene, the audience should really be into the film and should be anxious to watch it. A really good way to grab the audience’s attention in the opening sequence would be to start off with an action scene. Thomas Sutcliff suggests that in the opening sequence the character, place, storyline and tone should be established.