Analysing film openings

For one of our lessons, we watched a film opening and a film trailer in attempts to decipher the difference between the two. After seeing the differences between the two, we then watched a variety of film openings. This included Steven Spielberg’s “Catch me if you can (2002)” and P.J. Hogan’s “My best friends wedding (1997).”

Catch me if you can
The genre of the movie is clearly a crime/drama due to the ominous music and the animation. If you watch the animations throughout the film opening, you can easily figure out the entire film’s narrative. You can tell that it’s going to be about a chase and the pursued is going to take on a variety of job roles in order to escape his pursuer, as this is shown in the opening sequence. In the opening animation, the audience are shown an arrow pointing to one of the figures which we can figure out is Leonardo Dicaprio's character, as above the character is his name. The second character mentioned is Tom Hanks’, and we can tell that he is going to be the pursuer as his character is dressed in a detective’s attire. The atmosphere is ominous due to the music, and from the opening, we get an idea that the film will revolve around crime and a pursuit of a criminal.



My best friend’s wedding
The film opening immediately sets a lovey, feminine, light hearted atmosphere, and indicated to the viewer that the film’s genre is going to be romantic comedy. Through the opening of the film, we as the audience have an insight into the narrative of the film, knowing immediately that there is going to be a wedding, and that something is going to go wrong. The pink background and the fact that there were only female actresses made the film seem as though it was aimed at women. We can immediately see that the woman in the white dress is going to be a central character in the film whose purpose will be made more apparent later on. We know that the film will revolve around her marriage. Key themes that can be picked out of the opening are love and marriage, which is made apparent by the character’s props (such as the bouquet, the veil etc…) and attires (the wedding dress, the bridesmaid dresses) The old school music tells the audience that the film is set in the past and finally, the pink background indicates that they have filmed the piece in a studio. This makes it appear to be much more of a joke than it would if it had been set in a church.