Film Openings

 When looking at films one of the most important parts of the film is the opening. The opening of a film is extremely important to a film because it allows viewers to see basic information to learn what the film will most likely be about.

Key Characteristics/ Key Elements 

In order to understand how to analyze a films opening you must first understand the key characteristics of the opening. key characteristics of film openings or opening shots are 

Tone: the general character or attitude of a place, piece of writing, situation, etc. 

Setting: the place or type of surroundings where something is positioned or where an event takes place

Main Characters:  a central character(s) who acts as the audience surrogate

Theme: the subject of a talk, a piece of writing, a person's thoughts, or an exhibition

The meaning behide the opening

Even though there are many different types of film openings; they all serve the same general purpose which is to introduce the viewers to the main concept or idea of the film and what the film will be about. Some examples of these openings are 

Prologues: a montage or scene that is meant to succinctly communicate important backstory that happened before the film. Sometimes prologues have voiceover narration that dumps exposition onto the viewers all at once that is most commonly used in Fantasy and Epic type films. Prologues also can have no voiceover but instead have a flashback to revel a pivotal moment in the characters past (most likely from childhood). 

Inciting Incident: this type of opening scene introduces the inciting incident that sets the story into motion these events could be something similar to weddings, funerals, apocalypse or any major event of a characters life. An example of this is in the film "welcome home Roscoe Jenkins" made in the year 2008 in this film the inciting incident that gets the film up and going is a family reunion.

Day in a life: an opening scene that introduces the main character usually revealing a key strength and key liability and shows what the characters life is like before its changed by the events in the film. Sometimes day in a life scenes are not that dramatic or exciting. These types of openings are commonly seen in drama, comedies, and action films.  

Cold openings: the purpose of a cold opening is to grab the audience's attention and establish genre elements before beginning act 1. this is most common in Horror movies, Crime thrillers, and action movies. 

The similarities between theses film openings is that they all allow the viewers of films go get a basic idea of what the film they are watching would be about, they also allow viewers context as to what will happen during the film.  

Compare and contrast 

The three genres of film that I will be comparing are sci-fi, action, comedy. Some of the similarity's between each genre are that they all make use of certain shot types like the medium close up shot that is a shot of a character from the waist upwards that is used to show what a character is doing within a scene. Another similarity between each genre is the use of conventions like hero vs villain an example of this would be movies like star wars, avengers, and Brooklyn vampire. 

Some of the major differences in the genres are that all the films have different uses of Mise en scene 

for example costumes in sci-fi films are futuristic and technologically advance, while costumes in  action films could be super hero costumes that have a lot of detail like captain Americas suit. Another difference between the genres is setting of the films themselves, comedy movies can be universal and have any type of setting while sci-fi films are strictly in space or different planets or parallel universes.