Opening Sequence Research

Functions of Opening Sequence

• Recap Stars of film
• Set Audience Expectation
• Create mood/atmosphere for opening of film or to set a subconscious mood for main action of film
• Give an idea of location/setting
• Create character and plot enigma and introduce film genre/characters

Conventions

• Graphics
• Titles
• Establishing shots/ enigma creating shots (hard to understand shots, until key later on in film explains them)
• Music

Dawn Of The Dead, The Walking Dead and Zombieland, Differences and Similarities

• All include zombies in the title sequence to set audience expectation of a zombie film
• Only Zombieland has narration, this is to give a more comic/instructional effect
• The Walking Dead is all graphics, fully computer generated titles, maybe to give the audience the feel that this is not a realist film but a story to be observed from the outside
• Dawn Of The Dead however gives a "Blair witch project" feel, in that the footage is from people within the story i.e a news reporter being attacked by a zombie
• The pace of The Walking Dead and Zombieland are quite similar, they both have reasonably long time spanning shots, so the audience can look at all the details. On the other hand, Dawn Of The Dead is very fast pace and quick cut editing, this is to give the audience the same disorientation and feeling things happening quickly without warning that the characters within the film would have.
• The Walking Dead and Dawn Of The Dead use the colour red extensively to the point where a lot of the shots have a red hue and background, whereas in Zombieland the colour red is used for blood and titles, but to give the titles a modern feel, the picture is very high quality and rather than getting an overall blur of red, you get a variation of lots of very sharp colours.