As part of the Aice exam, we were tasked with filming a fictional movie opening as our portfolio project. Throughout the following eight weeks, I will be documenting my process, thoughts, and challenges here, in our very own blog.
Unbeknownst to many people, the opening of a film can make or break the whole production, it's vital for filmmakers to produce them correctly. In order to do so, I decided it would be best to do some research beyond what we learned in class on the importance of the first few shots of the film prior to the actual planning of our own opening.
I began reading articles that explained why the opening shot of a film is important, like this one from Outpost, and articles that gave tips to filmmakers and screenwriters on how to make a great opening shot, such as these from No Film School and Variety. Along with these articles, I also watched a couple of videos that not only spoke about how important openings are but also features opening scenes of a variety of movies and explains how these scenes affected the movie, such as these from The Closer Look, Now You See It, and CineFix.
From these sources (along with what we learned in class), I learned that the main thing a film opening achieves is setting the tone for the overall movie. The video from The Closer Look mentions how one should imply the plot of the movie through the opening in order to create a mystery that hooks the audience into watching the movie rather than directly stating what the movie will be about (like how the movie they mentioned, The Emoji Movie did for their opening). The same video also mentions how you don't have to rush the story during the opening scene, using the example of Indiana Jones where the opening shot introduces the characters along with the tone of the film.
While watching the videos I also noted some of the iconic opening scenes mentioned for future references. Some of these include:
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