Review on Film Openings

Task: A review of the film openings.




Touch of Evil Opening Shot








The famous crane shot from Orson Welles' 1958 film, 'Touch of Evil.' The opening shot of the Touch of Evil was interesting in how there was so much diversed activity surrounding the streets. The atmosphere in this shot sets a civilized environment. The most common camera shots used in the opening are long shots and medium shots towards the ending. There is a close up at the start that indicates the importance of the bomb. This scene is one whole scene that has been recorded with no pausing. The camera just follows the charatcters infront of them portraying their costumes and the setting behind them. The filming is in blackwhite and the lighting projected in this scene is directed from car headlights and street lights also resturants and shops located in the towns highstreet. The music genre chosen is Jazz which sets the feeling of social events amoungst the selected characters. There are sound effects of people having faint conversations passing by the main characters. This scene can indicate the mistakes clearly through watching the opening more than twice. Such as the characters scripted lines, they speak to soon before the footage lines up with the actions. At the end of the opening sequence they use pyro techniques because of the period of the time compared to modernized productions which use high defintion editing and special effects. There are special sound effects for the bomb that creates painc to the audience.

I looked at the opening scene A New Hope which is a Star Wars film. This opening to the film begins with scrolling yellow titles on a black background, it begins with a story to set the atmosphere and the plot of the film and gives description of the main characters and spaceships. This film opening compared to Touch of Evil uses mostly titles for a longtime at the start then footage is shown as the film opens in a spaceship with special effect. Comparing this to Touch of Evil this film opening is very basic with the editing and effects. You can understand how techonology has improved over period of time. The soundtrack to the film opening has a herioc feel to the genre. There are sound effects of the shooting between characters having a spaceship war.







The opening scene to contact has this radio transmitted sound effect while there is special effected footage of planets, stars and galaxys. The camera work uses a lot fast medium paste longshots, the lighting of the stars fading out in to the distance and the colours used in description of the planets create attention from the audience.