Kill Bill - Kill bill opens with very scared heavy breathing diagetic sound. Then a bland and white shot of a woman that appears to have been beaten up appears. In the background you can hear the sound of approaching footsteps. As she tries to compose her breathing the shoot cuts to a tracking close-up of the boots walking down a wooden floor the women charter then looks just off camera to which the audience presumes is the person who has just walked up to her. The character then speaks in a gruffly man voice. And goes to wipe some blood off the face of the woman. Clearly lettered on the face towel is the word Bill. The woman character appears to not want the character to touch her and refuses to speak. Her breathing gets heavier again. The male character then exchanges a few more lines of dialogue before the woman character says “Bill, it’s your ba...by” at which point a loud gunshot is heard and blood splatters across the floor from a headshot at the woman. There are no titles in the scene to tell you any companies or the film title or actors. But the very basic shoots straight away built a massive amount of suspense and present the viewer with a huge enigma for the film.
Shooter – Shooter starts from an extreme long shot and the camera dollies in. As if mounted to a helicopter it then tracks a river downstream at a slow pace the main actors name appears followed by a customises film title. Then various names appear on screen for producers, actors etc. The camera cuts across a meander and looks like it’s going to crash into a cliff but it then tracks up the cliff to the top and very slowly continues forward. Were it focuses on a camouflaged sniper rifle. The shot then cuts 180* to were the camera was where we see the two snipers disguised as bushes. At this point there has been oricestrical music which dies down. And the spotter speaks. The camera then cuts to a POV through a sniper sight.
We then discover that the two are just making conversation to pass time. At which point the camera goes to a US military camp were the viewer is shown hostile forces moving towards a US convoy. This is just in front of the snipers position. The sniper shoots and kills two men and the convoy continues. Then about 5 other enemy vehicles follow the convoy and the sniper has to engage them. The sniper comes under fire. The US camp chooses to leave them there as they are not supposed to be there. An enemy helicopter then shoots at them and the spotter is killed the sniper then does everything he can to shoot the helicopter. And eventually he shoots the rota blade and the helicopter crashes. I feel that this film would appeal to its target audience as although it is different to kill bill it again builds suspense to the viewer, and although the scene is longer than kill bill you still feel a high amount of tension. The time allows the viewer to feel for the two US soldiers. It also gives the viewer a story narrative to go on.
Sin city – the first scene has a title on it called “The Customer is Always Right” the scene opens and a women steps out onto a roof top balcony. A man starts a voice over about what he see and the viewers see him walk out. The two characters exchange dialogue and there is a faint sound of a saxophone in the background which is a non-diagetic sound. This suggests to the audience that there is romance between these two characters. They kiss and a strange style of cinematography is used. Just the main features of the backdrop are highlighted in white. With the two charters everything else is black. The scene looks like an art silhouette. And again we hear the male voiceover. The saxophone is very prominent again here. Then he tells her that he loves her in voice over and explains why he has to do it; as the audience hears a silencer gun shot. The audience feel saddened from what has happened. A long silence is heard as you can hear diagetic raindrops, before the voiceover oh him saying that he will ‘cash her check in the morning’ at which point a strange fade out sound is heard and the camera pans out of the location quite fast and curls around the city towers to reveal the buildings to say – Sin City. Again this is a different genre of film opening and gives the audience a lot of questions and enigmas to think about and answer. Again like shooter we feel for these two characters before we are startled that one of them dies.
So I feel that these three films opening have taught me that for a film opening to be great you must first appeal to your audience. You have to make the opening scene interesting. They will have paid money to see this film and if they don’t think that the film is any good in the first 3 minutes then they are not going to want to watch the rest. In order to keep their attention and make them want to watch the rest of the film I believe that you must give the audience a puzzle/ enigma to solve or think about. This puzzle will make them want to watch the whole film to find out what actually happened and see if their answer was right. To help build this puzzle I believe that suspense must be built up this can be done through the lengths of shot or by the soundtrack. Or even by what’s happening in the narrative. Usually with the suspense the audience will want someone to associate themselves with or even like. So an insight to what the charters like will do this. A voiceover will usually do this. The voice over makes us feel like we are in that charters head and that we know what he or she is thinking.
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