Film Openings (Importance)

Every film has an opening. Some manage to satisfy their purpose, while others, not so much. Film openings are basically the opening scenes of a particular film. Even though, yeah, it might seem like not much of a challenge to come up with an opening of around 3 minutes, but, rest assured, these opening are the very first thing the audiences get to experience of the work put into the film by the filmmaker. This first glimpse is essentially exactly what the viewer needs to form an opinion on whether they should watch the entire film or not.

The first and foremost purpose of these openings are to set the tone of the film, and to achieve the accomplishment of hooking the audience from the very beginning. When an opening has managed to succeed in grasping the audience’s attention, the viewers start to make guesses on how the film might play out. Film openings can even manage to portray some dramatic foreshadowing if a scene is particularly intuitive. These scenes usually consist of little hints of the unforeseen problems, which are sprinkled here and there, are meant to be picked up, and gradually lead to the guessing of the “What happens next?” question in the viewer’s mind. In short, film openings are significant as they set the mood of the audience and give them an insight of what to expect from the film the they’re about to watch.

Now, let’s dive into a couple of film openings and walk through the techniques the filmmaker has used to make it appealing to the audience. A well known example of a good film opening is from the movie “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc”, from the year 1981.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUWYmTpYdP4

This film showcases a really great film opening as it encompasses the quality to keep the audience in their seats. This opening scene establishes the character of Indiana Jones in just 3 minutes. The filmmaker dives into character introduction and has shown the viewers even complexities of him in a very short time span. The scene is set in nature, which gives the audience an idea of what to expect and what type of film they’re watching. The opening scene also contains elements of suspense, which basically is foreshadowing the incoming scenes that contain sense of thrill. The scene also sets the tone and hints on the genre of the movie from the very beginning. The elements put into this clip, for example the showing of fog in the atmosphere portrays mystery to be seen ahead and uncertainty of the unknown. The filmmaker shows the face of the protagonist a couple minutes later after beginning the film. All the events, that came before Indiana Jones’s face revelation, were kind of in a way leading up to this, showing the viewers the importance this character holds. Steven Spielberg, the director of this film, has thrown in many dramatic elements into the opening of this movie, which makes the viewers sure that they want to see how it all plays out.

Another example of a very intuitive film opening is from the film “Mission Impossible III” from the year 2006. The director of this movie, J.J. Abrams, beginnings the opening scene in a pretty interesting and somehow different way, which captures the audience’s attention right from the start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0COZysJvYs

Right after presenting the production logo of the film, it opens with a scene that would most likely be a climax moment in other films. The beginning scene shows the protagonist, Ethan Hunt, in handcuffs, having to watch Julia being held at gunpoint by the antagonist, Owen Davian. This technique of starting the film with an action packed scene is a genius one as it ensures the audience to remain curious as to what happens next. The antagonist is asking Ethan for the location of some particular thing, which the viewers don’t know as of yet, which also makes the person watching want to know more. The set in which this scene takes place is a dark one, with minimal lighting which signifies mystery, suspense and thrill for instance, also giving hints into the genre this film is. The opening scene also showcases the main characters, their personalities reflecting on how they deal with the situation present at hand. The beginning scene ends with a gunshot, and the screen turns black. This gives the audience a moment to think about what happened and it shows uncertainty as it’s unknown what happened and what will now happen. The mystery being portrayed right from the very beginning was an intuitive move on the filmmakers part as this opening scene certainly hooks the audience from the first shot.