'Watching'

In class we watched a documentary called 'Watching'. This documentary was about film and how the beginning sequence of a film can be done in totally different ways and showing how the first sequence is the most important part of the film.
The first 2 minutes needs to grab the audience, it needs to get the audience onside as they decide quickly whether it'll be what they want or not. Thomas Sutcliffe says: “films need to seduce their audience”.
Director Jean Jacques Beineix says there are risks with 'instant erousal', these are that the film should grow. The audience should have questions of which they don't know all of the answers. By making it grow it raises the question for the director what do I do next? And the audience questions what will happen next.
“A good beginning must make the audience feel that they don’t know nearly enough yet”. The audience make an early adjustment to what they think the movie will be about. But it is important for them to not know everything. In the opening sequence they want to establish many things for example location, characters and also they have to understand what type of film it is going to be.
Critic Stanley Kauffmann describes a classic opening as getting the audience on your wavelength. One example he described of being a good opening is a close up of a building, then in the window, then to receptionist desk - this establishes the organisation of the world.







This video above is the title sequence of 'SE7EN'. It is so affective as it tunes the viewers into the movie, and fore-shadows what is going to happen in the film. It 'hits the audience on the head, and wakes everyone up'.









Here is the opening sequence of  'A touch of Evil', by Orson Welles. He wanted to plunge everyone into it, he wanted to shock his audience straight away and be original and different, but the studio were cautious. So the effect Welles wanted to create was lost, they made credits, so it wasn't like the beginning of the film. Orson Welles was obviously not happy so he wrote a 500 word lette asking them to reconsider but the studio won. So they decided to start the film in the more traditional way, instead of using Welles more drastic idea.
I learnt about the trick of opening with the ending, and visa versa, this is what's meant by the term 'a favourite trick of Film Noir'.





Heres the opening to 'The Shining'. It creates suspence as it is picturesque yet pursues the car as a preditor. We know that the people in the car are travelling in the wrong direction. The menacing music emphasises the suspence in this isolated area.