4. Attracting Audience - Film Opener

HOW CAN A FILM OPENING ATTRACT AN AUDIENCE?

There are a variety of ways to make a film opening attractive and a few ways include through music, the angles it's taken from, the colours, the quality and even the typography. The media professionals involving Thomas Sutcliffe, Jean Jacques, Stanley Kauffmann, Kyle Cooper and Orson Welles let us in their secrets to getting an appealing film opener.

Firstly, according to Thomas Sutcliffe, "Films need to seduce their audience into long commitment. While there are many types of seduction, the temptation to go for instant arousal is almost irresistible." He is proposing that films need to be as flirtatious as possible to get the audience instantly interested and for that to happen, it is important that the opening of the film is fascinating enough to arouse the audience's curiosity to find out more and make it "irresistible" for them to leave without watching till the end. He suggests that the opening of the film should compel the audience to watch till the end.

Thomas Sutcliffe: "Films need to seduce their
audience into long commitment. While there
are many types of seduction, the temptation
 to go for instant arousal is almost irresistible." 

In addition, as claimed by Jean Jacques Beineix, the risk of 'instant arousal' is  that if the most interesting part of the film is shown at the beginning of the film to attract the audience, the film will go downhill as the minutes go by, disappointing the audience. What he suggests is to keep a balance of the level of excitement throughout the whole film, rather than 'fooling' the audience into thinking the film is going to be amazing judging from the beginning of the film.

Jean Jacques Beineix: "Instant arousal has a risk."

A good beginning must make the audience feel that it doesn't know nearly enough yet, and at the same time make sure that it doesn't know too little. This is because we want the audience to be prepared of what they are going to watch but with missing gaps of knowledge of the film and besides, if they know a little, they will want to fill in those missing gaps and know the full story. An opening should reveal enough to grab interest but little enough to make them eager to know more. A good beginning must allow the audience to establish the tone, mood, nature and genre and get them on their wavelength.

Moreover, the critic Stanley Kauffmann informs us about the famous 'classic opening'. A classic opening is known to be recorded through the city, up to the building, into the window, in the room, through the door and finally into the room where we meet our main character. Perhaps, the critic may have named it the 'classic opening' because it applied to the plot of everyday life and seems realistic.

Furthermore, Kyle Cooper's title sequence to the film "Seven" seems very effective and mesmerising because it has no dialogue, just movement which builds tension. Also, the notebooks, blade and writings foreshadows what the film is about and what it's genre is, even without talking and to suit the theme, the director, producer, character's names are written in a form that looks hand written to go with the notebook theme. Besides, an audience’s interest grabbed visually is stronger than it being grabbed with dialogue.

Kyle Cooper's title sequence to the film "Seven": Click to watch the opening

Additionally, Orson Welles’s title sequence to the 1958 "Touch of evil" film was made mesmeric and compulsive; primarily because the scene was taken at dawn which is something the audience wouldn’t expect and secondly because there is no dialogue but instead just a bizarre suspenseful music in the background. This oddity is interesting because it is something different and it will push the audience further to watch it till the end. It makes the audience curious of what it could be about and gets the audience to have many questions about it. Anyway, Universal studios re edited and finished off the film because Orson Welles had been absent for the final editing of the film. The editing of the film disturbed the director enormously and Orson Welles was unable to re edit it even though he tried. 

Title sequence of Orson Welles film "Touch of evil".

By "a favourite trick of Film Noir", it is meant that the film opens, showing the ending of the film and then starts to go in the order of sequence as to how it has reached that ending. In basic words, the film starts and ends with the same scene, just like the film "Titanic". This technique is a clever way to start the film as it confuses the audience at first and allows them to follow gradually. However, it could be very hard to use this type of film opener because, usually, the storyline has to be extremely interesting for it to work as the audience know what the ending is. 

Finally, the opening of the film "The Shining" creates suspense because the camera from the helicopter records the cars driving through the mountains as it drives along, almost making it seem like the camera is the predator, pursuing the car. It gives off the idea that there may be tension and predatory actions in the film. The music in the background also is effective and creates tension because it almost sounds like the footsteps of a predator while the camera follows the car. As there is not much going on, the audience would be curious of what it could be about. Not only is is peculiar, it is also unpredictable from an opening of a film called "The Shining".

The opening of the film "The Shining": Watch