Analysing and comparing three opening sequences.

Analysing and comparing three opening sequences.

In this blog post I will be analysing three opening sequences and later on comparing them between each other. The opening sequences I will be reviewing will be from firstly the movie “The Shining” then “Drive” and finally “Lord Of War”. I will be looking at camera angles, the connotations created and the effect on the audience and simply the over all feel of the intro.

The first film intro I am going to review is the intro to “The Shining”.

The Shining, (POSTER), 1980

The Shining is a horror film released on my 23rd, 1980, it was Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick was an American Director who died in 1999, only 19 years after the release of “The Shinning”. 

Stanley Kubrick

The Intro to “The Shinning” was shot on The Going-To-The-Sun road, located in Glacier National Park, Montana. The first shot is an extreme long and is also an establishing shot, it allows the audience to have an idea of where the film is and will be taking place. The whole intro is shot from a helicopter so it is all low facing shots. The first shot is a shot taken from the helicopter going over a lake, in the middle of the lake there is an island, an island gives a feel of isolation and loneliness so there is probably a reason why Stanley decided to put that as the first shot of the film. Most of the opening scene from about 00:20 is a tracking shot of a yellow car which most probably belongs to the main character/s, the yellow colour of the car makes it easy to follow and fix your eyes on while it drives along the road. 

The shot shows mainly the nature around the car, showing that they are in a empty place where it is mostly nature and there are no people. This makes the viewer feel the feeling of isolation, the same with the island in the first shot, with no one being around it gives the audience the feeling that something bad might happen because the thought of being alone somewhere far away from civilisation is scary. Along with this the music definitely adds to the whole sinister and lonely effect that the cinematography puts across, instruments like violins, guitars, and piano are played in the music. You could play happy and joyful music over this footage and it would look normal, its the type of footage which doesn't set the mood itself, it needs the music to be able to give across the mood which the director is trying to put across.

The Shining: (0:11)

The Shining: (0:45) 

From the beginning too the end of the opening sequence the car travels from the bottom of the mountain and as the sequence continues the car travels up the mountain and by the end the car reaches what seems to be the top of the mountain where there is a hotel, then that is the end of the sequence. There is a high angle used to show the car driving on a empty road. With this angle being used the car looks miniature compared to the surrounding. The surrounding in this mainly big trees, large mountains, and a lot of water which again emphasis the effect of isolation and makes the car small in comparison to there surroundings so this also makes them look vulnerable. This also puts across a feeling that the car is getting farther and farther from civilisation and society, and this brings us back to the feeling of loneliness, which as I explained before is scary, people don't like being alone. one thing that came into my head during the opening sequence is a question I've heard before "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” which is sort of scary because it is sort of the same thing as if anything were to happen to the people in the car through out the movie, they are in the middle of nowhere and it would be hard to get help.

The Shining (0:45)

The Shining (1:05)

The Shining: (2:24)

The Shining: (2:41)

Along the route that the car travels you see a few peculiar things for example at 1:52 you see what seems to be a police car with open doors, this is discomforting to the viewer, the audience thinks something bad might be going on, the audience doesn't actually have a clue if anything bad is going on but along with the sinister music it adds to the whole scary feeling which is building up through out this opening scene. Another thing I noticed Is that every other car you see (1:55 & 2:15) seems to be driving away from where the car is heading, this might simply be a coincidence but now that i re-watch the opening sequence and notice the police car and all the cars leaving from where they are going it does add too the “creepy” feeling the opening scene puts across.

The Shining: (1:52) Police car.

The Shining: (2:15) Car driving away.

The titles in this opening sequence are in a bright colour (turquoise), the titles are also in the middle of the screen. This draws the audiences eyes to the titles so that they read the names which is the point of the titles. I wouldn't describe the titles as “scary” though, which works against the sinister music and feeling which has been building up, I think this done to reassure the viewers in a way.

The Shining: (2:13)

At the end there is an establishing shot of a big hotel looking building because of its size and the fact that there are quite a few cars parked outside. With the Rocky Mountains in the background. Since it is the last thing the audience see’s and the shot is an establishing shot it lets the audience know that this is where the film is going to be taking place.

The Shining: (2:41)

All together I think that this opening sequence was relatively effective because it gave across the sinister feeling of the film, it makes the audience want to know what is going to happen in this big hotel, so this makes the viewer want to keep watching. Personally I didn't find it to attention grabbing or exciting, I got a little board of it by the of the sequence. So to end I do believe it was quite an effective opening sequence but definitely not the best I've scene.

If you would like to see the opening sequence to The Shining for your self, here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiV3J_e977Q

The second opening sequence that I will now be reviewing will be “Lord of War”.

Lord of War is a war film directed by Andrew Niccol who is a director, producer and screenwriter from New Zealand. The film was released on September 16th of 2005. The intro to this film is quite a good one, which is why I picked this movies intro because it is one I think is well done and is effective.

The movie starts off with a bang.. literally. The films opening scene for this movie is about the life of a bullet from being first created all the way up to being shot. 

The first shot of the scene, is a shot inside a placatory which seems to be probably somewhere in eastern Europe, my guess would be Russia because of the communist star we see on the machine at 0:08. The camera then pans down from the ceiling and zooms into a small part of a machine and the camera goes into the machine and starts following some bullets on there way down a production line as if it was a bullet itself. At 0:39 the camera attaches itself to the back of the bullet, almost as if it is a POV shot from the point of view of the bullet, the shot is like this all the way up to about 2:53 only 8 seconds away from the end of the opening sequence. We ride with the bullet throughout the process of being made through the factory until 1:28 where the box is wield and we can here noises as if it is being transported somewhere, then at 1:30 the box is opened and a seemingly Russian man (because of his Russian uniform), this man is standing next to docks where there is water and big transport boats so when the man closes the box at 1:35 again, this makes the audience think that the bullet will be once again transported. This is very effective in catching the attention of viewers because now the audience wants to see what the next step in the life of this bullet will be so this draws in the audience and makes them want to watch more of the movie.

When the box is opened again at 1:41, we see that it seems to be at another dockyard but this time in an unknown African country. The men which we see are quite heavily armed, one of the men even seems to be holding a rocket launcher, the men are dressed in what seems to be stereotypical African uniform so that the viewer really understands that the bullet has arrived somewhere in Africa.

The box with our bullet is then hit by a crane and the bullet falls out of the case, the bullet flies through the air and hits the ground, when the bullet rolls on the floor at 1:47 we see that when ever the bullet is upside down it is slightly elevated of the floor, and when it rolls over on to its bottom side it seems to be right on the floor, I think that the director wanted to really make it look like there is a camera attached to the bullet but do it in a discrete way, so when ever the bullet is upside down it is the small lens of the camera holding up the bullet and it is the camera touching the floor, when it rolls over onto its bottom side it is the bullet against the floor, this is done to make the viewer think that there really is some sort of small camera attached to the bullet. the bullet keeps rolling until we see it seem to bye rolling closer to the edge of the peer where we think it might fall in the water, this is a small little part to build a little bit of tension, wondering if the bullet will fall in the water or not, it isn't the most worrying thing but it does help to build tension in the opening sequence. The bullet is right by the edge of the water, about to fall in but then it gets rescued at the last second by a man who picks up the bullet and throws it back into the box with the rest of the bullets.

The box full of bullets is then loaded onto a truck, when the box is placed down on the truck the bullet get shaken and it points downwards into the box and it is pretty much all dark, this is how the director makes transitions in this opening sequence, it will go from a shot of what ever is going on then the shot will get dark in ways like putting a lid on the case or simply pointing the bullet downwards into the box and when the bullet is back up at the surface it will be somewhere else. In this case when the bullet points back up, it is now on the truck in what seems to be some sort of a forest/jungle type surrounding with two African soldiers with AK47’s and rocket launchers. (An example of the transition is shown with pictures bellow).