This is our Preliminary task: "Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom he/she exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. I worked in a group with Phil, Harriett and Kayla to complete this. We decided on the idea of a strange man purchasing a keyboard in a music shop. This was our first real opportunity to use the cameras to film and then the editing software in post-production.
In the opening of a feature film I would expect it to show some of the main characters, set the genre of the film and to give us as the audience a slight insight to what is coming up in the rest of the film. Well, that's what I thought until I paid closer attention to the opening two minutes when I realised that this is not always the case. In actual fact not much of what I thought would happen doesn't really happen at all! In this post I will be analysing 3 feature film openings and 3 student film openings these are:
Feature Films
Dark Night Rises
The plot of the film is only touched slightly in the opening two minutes. But what we can get from it is that there is a group of what I assume to be terrorists on a plane and they are being threatened to talk and give away some information. The real importance of the scene starts when the person with the mask is revealed.
This is clearly a significant character in the film because you can see the other mans reaction to who he has found under the bag on his head. And the only other important character that there seems to be is the ring leader of the people questioning the terrorists.
There is plenty of dialogue in the scene and it is used to show panic as the man is shouting and it also informs us on the situation at hand. The other significant dialogue used its when the man with the mask starts talking and says" Perhaps they are wondering why you are shooting them before you push them off the plane?" this shows the audience that he is a clever and experienced man in this field and should not be messed with.
Pokémon the movie
The plot of the film in this opening scene is not revealed at all. The only thing that we can get from it is that Ash from Pallet Town is a Pokémon trainer and must be a good one too because a random man says he is looking for him to battle against. This means that he must be respected around this area and he is well known.
All of the key characters are revealed in this opening two minutes at some point although the only one you hear is Ash. Most of the well know Pokémon are shown too in a huge battle against this traveller and of course, Ash wins.
There is not much dialogue in this scene at all apart from in the first 30 seconds when the two trainers meet. The rest is non-diegetic music. This is the theme song to Pokémon and it plays over the battle.
Lion King
The opening scene of this film is all non-diegetic music with some diegetic sounds in the background. the actual actions happening on the screen is not very revealing of the plot either as it just shows animals walking across the plains of a country. Near the end of the scene we see a lion and bird exchange some sort of signals with each other so this may signal that they are some of the more important characters in the film.
This film opening has been made very well because although its just music and animals walking it still makes me want to watch the film. And for Disney to manage to do that then they have done a very good job on making the opening two minutes.
Battlefield, Secret agent building, weapon sheds,
car garages
Bad Guys, Good Guys, People who help the good guys,
Civilians
War, Anger, Justice, Sadness, Happiness, Hatred,
These are just some of the genres out there and I have listed what I deem to be there typical settings, characters and themes of them genres. And this is my opinion and I know that they wont fit all films of that genre, its just meant to be a typical list of characteristics from that genre.
