08th January 09 Media Lesson

In today's Media lesson we learnt about movie openings. I enjoyed todays lesson because by the end of it I understood what made a good and not so good opening to a movie. We learnt about openings to movies which were considered classics. We learnt that there were four different types of movie openings:
1) Traditional Openings - 'Instant Arousal' - The idea in which there is a traditional 'cliche' opening to a movie, however there is alot of action and it is high tempoed which would grab the audiences attention therefore arousing their need / desire to watch the rest of the movie.
2) Traditional Openings - 'Slower Form' - The idea that you can have a traditional 'cliche opening', however it is slower paced and contains less action thus allowing the rest of the movie to build up and gradually peak at or near the end of the movie. This idea tends to nurture the audience into feeling comfortable as opposed to arousing the audience into desiring to know what happens next.
3) Graphic Title Sequence - A title sequence which opens the film and doesn't necessarily have any characters in it. It uses mainly graphics and abstract ideas to make it like a scene 1 of the movie.
4) Flashback - where the opening scene is from the middle or the end of the movie and then the movie works its way back or cuts straight back to the beginning of the storyline.

All of these movie opening types are made to engage the audience into wanting to watch further on into the movie. During this lesson we also learnt that the mis - en - scene of the opening is very important as it sets the idea of the audience off. Thriller openings tend to have dark lighting and objects which are controversial or mechanical. Also the non - diagetic sound that the opening scene has must be quite quick paced or contain lots of sticcato notes to create suspense. In terms of camera angles thriller scenes tend to have lots of extreme close ups mixed with matchbox cuts, quick cuts and varied camera lengths. The setting of the opening helps to engage the audience, thrillers tend to have either very small rooms as the openings or have large spaces like woods / parks as the openings. However as we saw in 'The Shining' by Stanley Kubrick, he used a seemingly harmless setting but his use of camera following the only car driving on an empty long road set up the tension which makes it a thriller.

I found this lesson very helpful as it instantly gave me ideas for my thriller openings and it also helped me to understand what made a good thriller opening.