A film opening is a short part at the very beginning of a movie/film. It is usually about 2 minutes long and is planned in many different styles and techniques in order to attract the viewer at the start of the movie.
This part introduces the characters, establishes the location, unfolds the narrative, creates an enigma, and creates titles.
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains contents from the opening scene of many movies as examples, such as Money Heist, The Dark Knight, King Man, Uncharted and The Matrix Reloaded Please consider carefully if you don't want to be exposed to that information before reading, thank you!
DIFFERENT STYLES AND TECHNIQUES OF FILM OPENING
A film can open in many different ways:
FLASHBACK:
A flashback opening scene is using a scene that took place before the whole movie to start the movie. It is used to show the development of the character until the movie, what have they gone through that build themselves now or what was their purpose, aim or motivation.
An example can be the first scene in Money Heist. The scene was telling the background of each character in the heist by using pieces of videos from the past of those characters to introduce who they are.
ENTER THE VILLAIN/HERO
Enter the villain/hero technique is already explained by the name of it. The opening scene of the movie is the scene about the villain or the hero. This technique is used to make either the hero or the villain memorable to the audience as well as reveal characters in the movie.
A great example would be in The Dark Knight where in the first scene, you would see a group of people with clown masks robbing a bank.
PLOT CATALYST
Plot catalyst is a more complex technique to understand, though it was used in many movies before without us noticing it. This technique is to show what is the story behind all the action in the movie. Or in another word, without the plot catalyst, the movie would not take place. The plot catalyst pushes the movie forward, it shows the reason why the characters in the movie do those actions later on. It influences our perspectives on characters, objects and the purpose or role they have.
King Man is one of the movies that use the plot catalyst for the opening of the film. The opening scene shows a fight with a terrorist gang which then result in the death of a character and reveal another character (Harry Hart). Later on, we see Harry Hart arrives at Eggsy's house and gives Eggsy (main character) a medal of King Man which is the beginning of the whole action of Eggsy further in the movie.
FLASH FORWARD
Flash forward is a technique that reveals a part of a story that would happen later on in the movie. This generates a question in viewers' minds "What happened?".
An example could be the opening scene of Uncharted. It started with the character falling down an aircraft during a fight with some characters trying to kill him
DREAM
This technique is about starting a movie with a scene of the dream of a character in the movie. Many directors combine this technique with other techniques such as flash forward or flashbacks to start their movies. This makes the dream of the character a tool to reveal what would happen later in the movie or what happened before the whole story start.
The Matrix Reloaded opening scene is an example. In the beginning, we can see a fight between character but then suddenly, the scene change to a bed where a character who was in that fight before woke up.
OTHER FEATURES IN A FILM OPENING
Showing the set-up:
Many movies start their movie with an aerial/master shot with a subtitle, introducing where is it and what time is it.
Enigma code:
Enigma codes are puzzles that exist in the movie plot. Many movies use establishing an enigma at the beginning of the movie so that it questioned the audiences, making them curious and what is happening or curious about what motivates a character to do that action at the start. These little puzzles would keep the audiences entertained and interested in the movie as the story goes on, more hints are given to viewers so that they are gaining pleasure and excitement while solving the puzzle. This idea was originally from Roland Barthes, a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician.
Title sequences:
This is the part where all the main contributors are introduced. Most importantly, this is a sequence of pictures and texts that introduce the "project". Sometimes, moviemakers use scenes from the previous part of the film or related cartoons or animated scenes as they are showing the title sequences. This makes the audience may understand the setting and the tone of the movie at the beginning. A great example of this would be Catch me if you can (2002).
THE THEORIES BEHIND IT
In fact, all the things that we have talked about actually fall below a media theory. The Narrative Theory is a theory of storytelling. The theory focuses on the fact that storytelling is the basic and one of the oldest methods of communication. While "story" is all the components of a story, the "raw material", the narrative is more about how you shift the story, how you construct and how you are being creative with the "raw material" you have.
To read more about this please check out my article "The art of storytelling - media theories"
To be specific, the Narrative Theory developed by Tzvetan Todorov stated that in a story, there is always a "balance" at the beginning (the equilibrium), where everything is in balance. A "disruption" would then appear and create a disequilibrium in the story. Next, an event would take place in order to "repair" the story, and create a new equilibrium.
REFERENCE:
Youtube, StudioBinder, 2021, Art of the Opening Scene — How to Start a Movie 6 Different Ways, From Nolan to Baumbach, available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw_ysaoVlt4&t=17s>
Youtube, StudioBinder, 2021, Art of the Opening Scene Pt. 2 — 6 More Ways to Begin a Movie, From Scorsese to Tarantino, available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2vtbcfmFDY>
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