Titles begin with a diegetic sound of gangsta's/chavs talking and shouting. This is used as a sound-bridge to link the straight cut into the film. It then shows a medium shot of three men, dressed in hoodies standing by a graffited wall. This establishes the location. The camera is used as a point of view shot as it is shown to be filmed on someone's camera. Stereotypes are used as they're stood in this graffitied place, smoking drugs. To stretch this further a close up of an illegal gun is used as a plot device and the diegetic sound of the gun is enhanced so it is clear what it is and to draw attention to it. The colour of this shot is very dark and cold. Darkness suggest; evil, bad.
A straight cut to a title screen and then another straight cut which is accompanied by a parallel soundtrack (rock music-fast paced) which is a fast tracking POV. The diegetic sound of a motorbike and a close up of a tyre which shows the importance of this object and how it will become their downfall. Very canted shots show different settings whilst racing around on the bike. We see dingy garages, council estates, etc. This suggests a run-down working class area, where crime is quite high compared to a calm countryside.
Still in a fast tracking shot, we see a young women pushing a pram in a long shot. Another close up of the gun seen earlier suggesting something is going to happen between the women and these boys. Diegetic sound of the women shouting and screaming with both of the boys laughing. The sound of the gun is enhanced as it has an importance in this shot. Then there is another long shot of the women being shot in the head and one of the boys hand holding the gun, which suggests its dominance.
It then ends on a canted angle showing a truck which has hit them and one of the boys lying on the floor next to the motorbike. Digetic sound of a wheel spinning and the sound of cars. It is a still shot as it contrasts against the fast paced shots before.
The start of Shutter Island begins with titles and a non-diegetic parallel soundtrack. It creates an eerie feel, which makes the audience ask questions; what's going to happen? Where are we going to be?
A title appears showing where the film is set, in this case 'Boston Harbour Island-1954'. A fade to white is used to transition into the first shot, establishing the film is about to start.
A boat then appears out of the fog and we are shown our first character in a close up, this helps empathise with his sea-sickness and to establish who our main character is. The sound-bridge still continues over these shots creating suspense because we're still unsure who this man is. Diegetic sound is used to add to the suspense; the sound of chains 'clanging' together. Connotations of chains; torture, trapped, no freedom.
A long shot is used to establish the next character and to show they're in fact on this boat which appeared out of the mist. The costume he is wearing reflects the time period they're in. Detectives used to wear trilby hats with a long brown coat, slightly showing a suit.
To indicate a flashback when one of the characters is asked about his wife, the contrast in colour changes to very high. A two shot medium close up is used to show how happy they were and also contrasts the present as he is now sea-sick on his way to an island. In this flashback a vinyl player is shown in a close up, music = happiness?
An extreme long shot shows the island they are travelling to and the non-diegetic sound-bridge becomes louder to indicate there is maybe something wrong with this island. The weather and a low contrast of colour foreshadows that there maybe something wrong on this island and something bad will happen.
Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1996) is a neo-noir thriller set in the snow-covered town of Fargo, North Dakota. The day-lit exterior shots of the film tend to have a primarily bluish hue, due to the reflective nature of snow, and the film begins with a minute-long extreme long shot showing a car, with another car in tow, driving from far down a road through the thick mist. This is accompanied by a mournful, melancholic non-diegetic soundtrack piece, featuring low string and woodwind instruments, which slowly crescendo as the car nears the camera.
This long-take shot begins as what appears to be a shot of a blue sky, with a bird soaring in the extreme distance, and as the car gradually becomes visible, this sky shot continues to be seen superimposed over the other shot, as the bird is occasionally seen. Widely spread, small black title credits appear also over this.
This long-take shot is preceded by a black screen with white text claiming that the film is a true story. While the film is in fact almost entirely fictional, the Coen brothers begin with this text to deliberately create an atmosphere of reality, which they claim allows them to depict more shocking events in the film.
After this opening shot, the sequence continues to show the cars driving through the lifeless, cold wastelands of the film's setting. A shot which begins as a close shot of the cars driving by and continues to watch as they travel into the hazy distance before fading to black shows the scale of the icy fields, creating an air of hopelessness, and a feeling that any number of horrific crimes could be performed in this place without ever being discovered.
From the faded black, we smash-cut to night shot of the same two cars driving towards a small solitary bar. There are several different light sources in this shot; the rows of street-lights, and the neon signs of the bar. These cast lumpy, odd-looking shadows in the piles of snow, and the setting gains a kind of dirty texture from them. The soundtrack fades, and we are left with the diegetic sounds of muffled music coming from the bar, drawing the viewer mentally into that location so that the story can begin.
Fig. 1 A still from Fight Club's
CGI credits sequence.
Fig. 2 Edward Norton's greasy mug.
Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, begins (as with several of David Fincher's films, i.e. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) with an abstract CGI opening credits sequence. (Fig. 1) This depicts the camera travelling rapidly through human skin on a microscopic level, which is gradually revealed as the camera tracks out showing, beads of sweat and tiny follicles, and eventually leaving the skin and settling on an extreme close up of the aimer of a gun in shallow focus. This focus pulls back to show the top half of Edward Norton's character's face, dripping with sweat and covered with bruises. (Fig. 2) This opening sequence, using nauseatingly swift camera movements and grimy aquamarine colours to show a human body part on a larger scale than ever typically seen, unnerves the spectator, while preparing them for the visceral, biological tone of the rest of the film. The non-diegetic soundtrack over this credit sequence (embedded below), a loud, discordant techno-style track with a thumping drum beat and whining synthesised notes, enhances this unpleasant experience for the viewer.
Once the camera is focused on the protagonist's face, the soundtrack stops and is replaced by both non-diegetic and off-screen diegetic speech, in the form of a voice-over from the protagonist, and dialogue from the antagonist, Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt). The voice-over is in present tense, which implies that the later body of the film will be in flashback form.
The majority of shots continue to be close-ups of Edward Norton's character, in shallow focus, and Tyler Durden is visible out-of-focus behind him. Fewer cuts are used than may be at first obvious, due to the incredibly fast sweeping camera movements. The scene uses very low-key lighting, painting everything in the same bluish-green tone as before. The costumes of both characters are ragged and dirty, and the main prop is a gun, the dirtiness of which is commented on in the voice-over. All of this combines to create the sensation of an awareness of filth in the spectator's mind, which is very unsettling.
After our introduction to these two characters, more incredibly fast computer-generated camera movements show the setting of a semi-abandoned skyscraper packed with home-made explosives, leading to enigmas being planted in the spectator. Who are these people, why are they in a building about to explode, how did this situation come to be? As the camera tracks in on Edward Norton's face, the diegetic sound effect of Tyler's watch ticking gets louder and louder, filling the scene with tension.
As our characters were all different kinds of people to ourselves, some creative costuming was required. The main costume featured was, of course, that of Santa Claus. Originally this was to be provided by one of us, but we then discovered that the college's theatre costumes department happened to have a Santa costume free, and so we used that. It consisted of trousers, a jacket, a belt, a hat, and a rather fetching beard. The other two characters were intended to be children. For Aimee's character of the interrogater, she dressed in a bright pink dress with her hair up in pigtails. For Kieran's character, the thug, we decided a slightly undersized shirt would add to the comic effect, and so he used a t-shirt with Elmo on from a few years ago which he had outgrown, and planned to wear shorts, but his legs were too hairy to convince the audience that he was a child.
