Codes and Conventions of Film Openings

In order to understand what makes a successful film, we learnt about the importance of codes and conventions in various openings. As we watched the film openings for Halloween, Trainspotting and Amelie we drew tension and sound trackers and recorded what happened at different points within those 2-3 minutes of the film. For each we discussed the importance of codes and conventions:

Amélie (2001)- French romantic comedy film

Halloween (1978)- American horror film

Trainspotting (1996)- British black comedy drama film directed by Danny Boyle

I also continued to study the openings for the films Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Dirty Dancing. From looking at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 opening, I can understand the kind of conventions that they were going for in terms of trying to create an atmosphere of danger but excitement for what might happen next. They did this by...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)- Action Thriller Fantasy Adventure Film

Dirty Dancing (1987)- American romantic dance drama film

In the Amelie opening sequence, the director used a lot of red in the titles which is an indication for the audience that maybe themes of love, romance or danger are involved in the narrative.

From this we learnt that a lot of film openings:
begin with an establishing shot (usually a long shot of a scene) to quickly demonstrate the relationship between the set/location and the characters
use hand-held shots for horror or to give a film a sense of realism, like the audience themselves are actually in the action
often use narrative voiceovers to inform the audience about the context of the setting and the characters
have extreme close-ups which zoom out to a long shot of the entire setting to display the emotions of a main character and to convey a dramatic moment