analysis of thriller movie openings
TRANSCRIPT
ANALYSIS OF THRILLER MOVIE OPENINGS
By: Mohamad Attia
CONTENS Seven (1995) Inception Fight club Hotel Rwanda
SEVEN(1995) MOVIE OPENING ANALYSIS
This is the opening of seven click it to view the opening
CAMERACamera use
the camera was used very creatively in the opening not allowing the audience to establish a sense of direction neither does any of the shots allow the audience to see any characters or locations leaving the audience unaware of what is happening, there is almost no camera movement other than the slow panning of the Metronome and the books in the last seen.
CAMERACamera shots
There were three kinds of shots used in the opening the first would be a mid shot, the one witch shows the Metronome, then there are 6 close-ups, 36extreme close-ups and 2 panning the close ups force the audience to concentrate on the details for most of the opening allowing the audience to see all the nasty things in the opening while the 2 panning shots at the end of the trailer shows the amount of books that have been made this way.
SOUNDMost of the sound in the opening is non diegetic sound except for the Metronome ticking at the start of the opening. The music used in the opening is very fitting for the imagery coming with it. The original sound track of the opening is called “Closer (Precursor)” according to Wikipedia the heavily edited music was made with a base drum and the addition of different sound tracks together to create a special unnerving feel to the music also a lot of the sounds in this music was muted to give the music an unnatural feel
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closer_(Nine_Inch_Nails_song)
EDITINGTransitions
The opening to seven is heavily edited with a lot of rough transitions. The openings have two types of transitions a Cut transitions and a quick fade transitions those two transitions are widely used in cinematography and not special.
The opening of seven intentionally used text on top of fade transitions to add the opening credits, the font that is used in the opening of seven is a crude font created from another font especially for seven.
EDITINGStyle and effects
The opening of seven is heavily edited, the is also very fast paced with different clips switching every 4 sec or less. to add to the roughness and crudeness of the opening David fincher added random shaking and flickering of texts also some clips were duplicated on top of each others. To the end of the opening there were some frames witch were added in the middle of clips with random text on them to disturb the audience.
MISE-EN-SCENEProps and locations
the opening of seven doesn’t show the audience any locations, and as most of the shots are close-ups from different angles the audience aren’t allowed to have any sense of direction.The Probes used are as follows: writing equipment, Books, papers, sewing kit, Shaving equipment, scissors and random photos. Most of these probes can be associated with indoors work and with the style of lighting most evidence recommend a closed office.
MISE-EN-SCENELighting and color
the lighting used in the opening is mostly white Light which is mostly seen indoors, the light is fader than normal recommending a crude and slow atmosphere.the opening also includes a lot of frame highlighting in different colors, the colors most used are red and yellow recommending a chilling atmosphere for the audience.
THE GENIUS BEHIND SEVEN’S OPENINGSeven is known for having a revolutionary opening which uses new elements to show the opening credits, the opening follows the antagonist in the movie ,also the credits do not show the antagonists name in the starting cast, the whole movie in general was built over the opening. The opening also showed a lot of nasty photos and crude text that introduced the audience to the style of the movie, also the opening answers to a lot of mysteries that are shown in the rest of the movie.
INCEPTION MOVIE OPENING ANALYSIS
The analysed opening of Inception
CAMERACamera usethe camera use in inception’s opening is standard using mid-shots and panning camera, and with extremely smooth camera movements. The opening doesn’t have an establishing shot, instead it starts with the main character’s close up, the camera follows the same style multiple times showing Leonardo DiCaprio the most then Joseph Gordon and Ken Watanabe the least, the audience can see the difference in importance between those characters for the movie.
SOUNDThe opening of inception starts with only diegetic sounds, after the first conversation, you can hear non diegetic sounds in the background for the previous dream, the volume of the tiking is amplified in the middle of the scene to add importance to what the time passing quickly represents, Background music starts playing when the characters wife appear creating a sad theme for the scene and the background music changes to a slower tone to make the audience feel mysterious.
EDITINGInceptions opening doesn’t have a lot of complicated editing as most transitions are standard cuts, The opening doesn’t have any credits other than the logos of the companies. The opening has two settings happening at the same time there is the main setting where the characters are talking and the setting where the character is sleeping and explosions are happening, both those settings are separated by the clock scene in the middle, That is pointing out to how time moves slower with when entering different layers of dreams.
MISE-EN-SCENEThe opening of inception has a lot of interesting probes, from the start of the opening you can see that the main characters are in some kind of eastern Asian styled room and according to the clothing of the character they can be at an important meeting or party. As the scenes progresses the audience discovers that the story is taking place in some kind of Japanese styled grand hotel, but with the cuts to other settings in the middle the audience gets confused about where the scenes are taking place.
GENIUS BEHIND INCEPTION OPENINGOne of the very impressive part about inception is how the audience is thrown into the middle of the plot without the audience knowing about inception and dreams etc.. Which causes the audience to be more interested to know what inception is meant to be (which is explained in the first arc of the movie). There is also the part about the dialogue that makes the audience make some sense out of what is happening but not know the full story. The opening of inception tries to be as confusing as possible to make the audience interested about what will happen next.
FIGHT CLUB MOVIE OPENING ANALYSIS
The analysed opening of Fight Club
CAMERACamera useThe opening sequence to fight club uses an extreme long shot, the shot style doesn’t change throughout the whole opening sequence, as the duration progresses the camera zoom also changes, at the start of the opening the audience can see the walls of the brain cells of the main character and at the end of the zoom in the audience can see the gun pointing at the main characters throat.
SOUNDDiegetic soundsThe opening of fight club doesn’t have a lot of diegetic sound other than the two lines that are used by the main characterNon-diegetic soundThe opening of Fight club is composed mostly of music, except for the main characters dialogue. The soundtrack used for the opening is called Coffee Shop Zak. After the soundtrack ends and the opening seqeunce
EDITINGStyle & effectsThe opening sequence of fight club is not heavily edited as it only has 2 cuts because of the use of the continuous shot, the text used in the credits was adapted from the book. The way the credits are shown is with a quick flash of characters, one of the clever things David Fincher did in the opening sequence was flashing the text in the opening with the music. the style of the opening witch mostly consists of blue black and white allows the audience to be excited and the techno music further enhances the experience.
MISE-EN-SCENEProps and locationThe opening to fight club uses location in a very interesting way as the start location is a brain ( anybody with basic biology knowledge would now that) and then ends with a damaged chair where the main character is tied to, the end of the opening implies that the location is some kind of abandoned flat in a high building. The props used in the opening are mostly: the CGIused at the start of the opening, the chair, the gun and a wire, which doesn’t mostly imply anything.
GENIUS BEHIND FIGHT CLUBS OPENINGFight club’s opening is unique as all other David Fincher openings, The opening doesn’t show as much information as Seven but at the end of opening after the zooming out sequence ended the audience are shown the main character having a gun a pointed at him, this wasn’t a widely used style to start a film, as opening a film with the last 5 minutes of the movie might spoil the whole story, But David Fincher made so that no information would be spoiled for the audience from showing a part of the ending.
CAMERACamera useThe opening of Hotel Rwanda starts with a black screen for the first minute, then an establishing shot, with the shots afterwards consisting of establishing shots, mid shots, close-ups and two shots, the movie has a very consistent still camera that mostly doesn’t move or pan between shots. There are a lot of establishing shot to set the location of the film, and what kind of country Rwanda is.
SOUNDDiegetic soundsMost of the diegetic sounds in the opening consists of character dialogue and background noise, there is also the sound of the radio at the start of the intro.(witch might be diegetic sound or non diegetic sound.), also most of the music can be considered diegetic sound as they were still coming from the car in the openingNon-diegetic soundsThe only diegetic sound that can be heard is the slow music used when the machetes are seen which can show how serious how serious the machetes are.
EDITINGStyle and editingMost transitions in the opening are cut transitions that might be because the directors wanted to make the film a lot more realistic. The style of the opening shows that the movie has a serious message. The way that the music from the radio were edited with the establishing shot helped more with the atmosphere of where the movie is taking place.
MISE-EN-SCENEThe main character usually wears a suit showing he is an important or smart person, it is very obvious where the film is taking place as the film shows the name of the airport in the opening, the props used show different aspects of what the main character is doing from taking the expensive cigars to the Van. Also the machetes show the different aspect of what the character might be involved in. the T-shirt was a suppose to show that the main character is involved in some kind of idealistic party, and with machetes involved it shows how dangerous the real situation might be.
GENIUS BEHIND HOTEL RWANDA OPENINGAt the start of the opening the audience are hearing a radio broadcast starting with normal news then interrupted by a talker who talks about purging the tutsi, this is foreshadowing to the future events of the movie, also the film makes the audience think more, as the audience doesn’t know the background of the character then it comes as a shock when the trader offers the main character to join them, and then afterwards the audience being shown the machetes which was part of the ‘revolution’. With the reaction of the Van driver it helps even more build up the atmosphere