Film openings

I have studied two film opening very closely looking at the different techniques used by the different directors and how the genre effects the difference of the film’s opening. The two film openings I looked at was ‘something gotta give’ and ‘inception’; both with two very different genres and two very different ways to introduce a film to its audience.

SOMETHING GOTTA GIVE

‘Something gotta give’ is a classic romantic comedy directed by Nancy Meyers. It’s very much aimed at young/middle aged women. But as I noticed from the opening sequence it can appeal to men watching it too, even if it wouldn't be necessarily something they would chose to watch over an action film. The opening very much exploits women’s sexuality.  Using very beautiful young women to star in it, walking around and in a way that was practically hypnotizing men they walked past. The one part where a typical skinny, tall blond girl is walking down the street standing tall with a smile on her face and all the taxi drivers turn and look up to her creates this impression. The type of shots used were close up of all the different areas of the woman’s body especially all the different faces. It almost gave the feeling that women were on parade. The title sequence fit around the scenes of which all the different women were in, although I hardly recognised the title sequence as the pictures shown on the screen grabbed more of your attention.

INCEPTION

‘Inception’ had a totally different genre, this was an example of and action film opening sequence, this film was created by Christopher Nowlen. Being an action film I felt It was aimed at men even though a majority of women also enjoy watching action films. In a stereotypical manor I would say ‘something gotta give’ was aimed at women and ‘inception’ was aimed at males. This was extremely different as there appeared to be no title sequence, you are thrown right into the start of the fill. This made the feel of the film quite intense and your chucked straight into what happened, it was almost like a puzzle and you had to work out what was happening bit by bit for it to make sense. Straight away your informed with there being two different time frames going on and I inferred that it would probably be like that throughout the whole story. This idea was created by using focus in one scene then flicking to another which appeared out of focus with muffled sound. I liked the way it was straight to the point and it didn't seem to waste any time on suspense even though it left you in suspense in its own right.