Film Opening Analysis

What do you think makes an effective "film opening"?

Crisis - 'something 'going wary' '

Suspense - an element of curious, mystery, enigma

Location (time, rural vs urban, post apocalyptic, etc.) - where is the World set

Title 

Genre - mood, the atmosphere

Character (representations)

Equilibrium - balance

Disequilibrium - something happen to disrupt

Analyse Opening Film

Children of Men

 

Genre - how is it established

The main genre of 'Children of Men' includes sci-fi due to its sense of futuristic and thriller, which combined to create the hybrid genre. The sub-genre of this film is action and crime, suggested by the explosion at the end of the opening scene. 

Narrative - what do we find out

 The narrative exposed the audience to basic information of the film including the period of time, a grasps of the situation and a crisis. The time setting is shown on the screen in letter forms, 'London, 16th November 2072, emphasised by the types of transportation, tones of colour and the situation. Situation presented as the voice of the television mentioning the youngest person in the World, at the age of sixteen Baby Diego, got murdered by one of his fans. The opening scene ends with an explosion giving the audience curiosity and thrills. 

"Enigma"- what questions does it raise?

The importance of an opening scene is to get the audience curious about the movie. In this opening scene the news report on the youngest person gets the audience thinking, as of why is the youngest person on Earth is 18? And possibilities which have not been concluded such as human stopped reproducing, that human race will soon come to an end, etc. The explosion at the end, not only gives the audience the thrills and excitement but questions regarding why there was an explosion at the coffee shop.

Representation - characters, location

Characters in the scene wore dull colours and were all old age people, which represents the director's interpretation of the future, and supports the story line regarding that the youngest person in the World is only 18. 

The main character is a man in his 40's, he seems to be careless and cynical, suggested by the scene where all the characters were engaged in watching the television in synch but the main character just walked in carelessly in need of his coffee. Before the explosion, the main character puts alcohol in his coffee which connotes that he have faced many problems in his past life time.  

The location represents the time setting which is in 2072, in the future the dull colour of the scene suggests that it is polluted. Moreover the 

Location

polluted

grey

dirty

faded

dangerous 

juxtaposition (car - Asian, suggests globalisation)

 Mood and tone