DW: Opening sequence analysis

(Post broken, cannot highlight words)

The silence of the lambs (Demme 1991)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sx08_OSXlY&feature=fvst

Film language:

• In this scene mise-en-scene provides with a sense of isolation and independency of the woman protagonist. She is alone in the foggy woods and has good physical endurance as we can see from the obstacles she crosses.
• Mise-en-scene also tells us a lot about where she works, the man has an FBI hat on showing the woman is involved with law enforcement hence why she is training. All other extras training are men which again enforces a sense of independence for the protagonist, also challenging the stereotype that women are weaker than men and are often in worse jobs.
• Towards the end of the initial scene both men and women police officers can be seen attending to weapons, perhaps showing this film also conforms to the dominant ideology of today’s society that genders are equal.
• The shots used are mostly long shots, with panning involved to show the surroundings I.e. what kind of establishment this woman is in, also shows that the office building contains high authority people in, juxtaposing with the assault course.
• Sounds such as extras talking within the building, and general common noise of a busy building creates verisimilitude for the clip. The soundtrack adds meaning to the running scene also - it is quite intriguing and fast paced, common with thrillers and horror films to add a sense of tension and mystery (reinforced by dark and foggy woods).
• The protagonist clearly has good physical endurance as we can see from her running everywhere and the sweat on her jumper, she does not struggle on the course and the signs describing pain shows us that the assault course is hard yet she copes with it. From what we see of her she is generally smiling, a woman says hello to her perhaps showing she is known and liked.
• The director uses zoom in the clip to isolate and pick out the protagonist from the crowd.

Representation & ideology:

• In the excerpt we can see men working alongside women, and also the idea that women physically cope just as well as men can - the protagonist sees no difficulty in running from place to place and overcoming obstacles. Thus enforcing a sense of equality from the inset.
• Again a sense of independence is represented by the woman character as she is on her own and the only other people training are all men in groups. Her costume makes her stand out from the rest of the people in the building. The clip shows that women can be just as powerful/achieve to the same level as men can in the police force. This discourse conforms with that of modern society.
• In lots of films the strong/heroic protagonist tends to be a man and in this case it is a woman, challenging the generic expectations. The woman is represented as strong and independent as we can see from the capture of her being mainly on her own.

28 days later (Boyle 2002)
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1VbxTx2uLQ

Media audiences:

• The target audience is likely to be the horror audience - of males between 15-24.
• The audience are likely to read the text as well filmed, good sense of verisimilitude created by all the “mobile phone” type and media clips of chaos and disorder from all over the world. Thus high production values and sense of realism
• To me the opening seems very real, as if the events have actually happened, I believe this is the preferred reading of the film. There have been quite a few films similar to this, I.e. end of the world, apocalypse type sub-genre and this opening seems to have captured a realistic account of what could happen and how. Although I do find the laboratory scene perhaps the opposite - quite unrealistic, if what was going on in the lab was extremely dangerous it would be very highly protected, kept secret etc. and it would not be so easy for a group of animal rights activists to break in in the first place. The oppositional reading could instead be that the film is ridiculous and it would never happen.

Institutional context:

• There doesn’t appear to be any well known stars in this film.
• This film was produced by Fox Atomic and the UK Film Council, it is an independent film and was directed by Danny Boyle.
• The film grossed over $28 million worldwide, had a website with all information, stills and trailers. It was distributed in Russia by 20^th Century Fox.
• For an independent film this movie has high production values within the opening scene. Especially with the nationwide violence scenes etc. It is quite uncommon to see independent films with a small budget to achieve good production values and sense of realism.

Dawn of the dead (Synder 2004)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdPWrAMXGGo

 Genre:

• This film belongs to the horror genre (as we can tell from the conventions in the opening).
• The generic expectations of a horror film are fulfilled within the opening. There is a description of a deadly virus that will turn people into zombies (classic horror monsters) scenes of violence and gore and destruction, also conventional of horror films. Its fast paced and hard hitting. The opening is actually very similar to the movie above - 28 weeks later.
• There is plenty of action and horror style features within the opening for example fighting, death, gore, blood, tatty font and fast cutting rate etc. or in other words - iconography.
• The text conforms typically to the genre in that it utilises all the things above (which are conventional of horror films) in the opening sequence. Having said this the music to accompany the scene is quite upbeat in terms of how it sounds, however the lyrics are actually very saddening and depressing, which leads us to believe it may have been used ironically. With the help of the soundtrack the scene shows the deterioration of mankind.

Narrative:

• The narrative is constructed completely out of snippets of news reports which tell us what is/has happened/happening to the world and the danger it causes (reinforced by everything shown on screen).
• The audience are positioned to be able to understand what has gone on in the world and that basically mankind are under threat of extinction from a deadly virus.
• The music makes us feel alone and perhaps alienated, with the help of the shots on screen it creates a sense of helplessness and that mankind could one day perhaps be over run in this way, dialogue and filming has been done very realistically.
• The major themes of the narrative are that of conflict and worldwide destruction.
• There is little tension created from soundtrack or dialogue however from what we can see the events on screen seem less severe at first and appear to build up until the end where it is evident that human survivors are over run and there is little hope left at all. The small amount of tension is relieved at the end of the scene where the “media coverage” type shots come to an end and the music begins to quieten.