Opening Scenes Research

In order to understand more about how good opening scenes are filmed and constructed, I briefly analysed three very different films – “Collateral”, “Kidult Hood” and “The Dark Knight Rises”.

“Collateral"

The “Collateral” opening starts with an effective sound bridge of an echoing, crowded place, which sets the scene seconds before any footage even has a chance to begin. The first shot we get of the main character is an open-frame close-up through a blurred crowd, instantly highlighting his importance to the plot. The lighting is typical of an airport; almost harshly bright and mundane. To the same effect, the background sounds remain faded and seemingly slowed, and yet the audience can clearly hear the man’s measured steps overlaying the humdrum, showing his confidence. The fact that he is wearing sunglasses adds a similar effect, as well as the element of facelessness. The cut to the second man isn't hurried but is direct, and the camera swaps back to the first man and allows for an extreme close-up before they bump into each other. At this point, the cuts and camera work drastically speed up to portray the urgency of the situation. The sound-effect of the suitcase falling is digitally enhanced and we are also given a close-up of it to show that it is something the audience must notice and remember. After the brief dialogue executed through a series of close-ups (wherein we see that the two men have, in fact, swapped suitcases), the music changes, speeding up significantly as we get a point of view shot over the shoulder of the man with sunglasses. All this adds excitement to the exchange we had just been shown, and begs the question how the suitcases are important in the story.

A fast-changing montage of close-ups on the typical elements of a taxi drivers’ waiting room accompany this change of soundtrack and are used to introduce a third new character. Usual car and general transportation sounds are run in the background (hiss of a cooling engine, rings of a telephone, muted alarms) to really set the scene and make it realistic and vivid. An extreme close-up of a man’s hand carefully writing on a crossword is presented to highlight the fact that the person we will soon meet is careful and intelligent. The camera pans over the waiting room and tilts on a different shot to show one of the workers fixing a car. All this is done to contrast the rest of the taxi drivers present with the man we are interested in – while they talk on the phone and fuss over their vehicles, he is calmly sitting and waiting for his shift whilst completing an activity to train his mind. Finally, to the sounds of running engines and clicks, the camera tilts up to show us a close-up of the new character – he is working with his head down and is wearing a pair of glasses. All this is done to show his intellectual nature. After a brief point of view establishing shot of the commotion around him (again, to contrast him to the rest of the people present), we are shown him getting into his taxi. A series of extreme close-ups show him quickly clean the wheel and headboard, and then check that the turn signals work, establishing his character as not only clever but meticulous and neat (or indeed practically a perfectionist). The general sounds of the station are suddenly muffled as he shuts the car door (creating a sense of isolation and frustration with the mundane), and we see, via another extreme close-up, that he has a picture of a landscape fastened where his personal mirror should be. This further establishes the taxi driver as a man bored with his day-to-day life and dreaming of a better place. At the end, a mid-shot shows him pull away in the car, which looks exactly as the one that follows it, implying that any other taxi, really, could have been involved with the story to come but, by chance, it happened to be him.  

“Kidulthood”

The opening to this film is much shorter than the previous one, and the filming style is completely different. The first shot is a close-up of someone wearing school uniform playing football, shown in slow-motion to capture the audience’s attention straight away and set the scene as any average secondary school. The lighting for the whole sequence is slightly washed-out but natural, presumably to create the feeling of a cloudy day outside. The camera moves erratically, speeding up and slowing down intermittently; it’s almost a mirror of the human eye, creating the sinister feeling that these teenagers are being watched by an outsider. The shot even flashes white and blurs from time to time as if replicating the action of blinking. The music equally follows a similar pattern; it has a static-like, shaky beat and somewhat creepy but fast-paced tune. We are shown a few mid-shots of random kids before we go to an extreme close-up of someone putting the nib on a drill, making the audience wonder what that has to do with the previously shown footage. The camera then pans over a girl pacing and talking on the phone, and we hear a brief snatch of her conversation – again, it’s as if we’re experiencing someone watching these teenagers. The shot changes to a group of boys standing nearby, this time talking about a party, then showing another close-up of the football game going on a few feet away to keep the camera moving. As viewers, this sort of swapping and changing creates the sense that we are everywhere at once, and is in fact realistically reminiscent of actually being in a crowded scene such as this where there are hundreds of details vying for your attention. After the change of shot, we actually see part of the face of the person about to drill something; they remain essentially mysterious to us, and their purpose is still unknown, which creates further suspense around these short scenes in-between the chaos of the playground. We return to a shot of the girl that had been talking on the phone; she is now talking with another girl, and then, via reverse shot, the filming turns to point of view as they look at and discuss a few of the people standing nearby. Throughout this, we again hear snatches of dialogue from the different groups, establishing their personalities somewhat and even showing a little about their social status within the school. This is interrupted by the final shot of the given sequence; the reverse shot switches back suddenly and shows one of the boys coming over and giving the girls an invitation to his party via a last mid-shot. With this, the story finally begins properly.    

“The Dark Knight”

The first scene of this outstanding film starts with an establishing shot that slowly rolls via dolly across a skyscraper town in natural daylight, gradually zooming in on a particular black glass building, setting the scene as urban and modern. This is backed by a low, quiet whining sound that is typical of a thriller building tension. Suddenly, with an enhanced shattering, one of the many windows is neatly blasted open from inside, and we are given a close-up of an anonymous man in a clown mask. Clearly, he is up to something illegal, and the fact that he has chosen a mask with a circus performer’s face gives the sight a ghastly, surreal feeling (as well as instantly linking him to DC’s most beloved villain, the Joker). Thus, both the character design and the unknown purpose of this individual draw the audience in straight away, even more so when we see there are in fact two men in the room, not one. A circular tracking shot swings round to show us out of the window just as, with a loud swish, the first man shoots a harpoon wire at the other building’s wall. The shot changes suddenly to show us another man from behind, standing at a crossing with a bag and holding a similar, angrier clown mask. The camera slowly zooms in on it and the tension builds along with the music, calling into obvious question who the man is and why he’s separate from the others. The moment is interrupted by a car pulling up hastily next to him, accompanied by the loud, pained screech of tyres, suggesting an illegal speed.

As the slowly mounting music continues, we return to the first two men as they get up onto the tables in the room via a mid-shot that uses back lighting to reveal only their silhouettes, further layering on the mystery of who they are. A tracking shot follows their descent down the zip wire and then sharply tilts down to reveal how far away the ground is. This is played alongside a timed hollow booming sound to add an even greater sense of drama to the events. An aerial shot rolls as the two men continue down the self-constructed zip wire and onto the roof of the new building, wherein a low shot shows them rather impressively landing on the gravel. The interior of the car from before is briefly shown; there is no lighting inside and the camera is positioned behind the three passengers and so, again, all we see are mostly silhouettes and sometimes the sides of their clown masks as they briefly discuss their endeavour. An allusion is made to the fact that there is money involved in this job as the men load their guns, and the benefactor for the undertaking is confirmed – the Joker, of course.
The shot changes back to a mid-shot of the two men on the roof, (the changes between shots come faster and faster now, building excitement) but the Joker’s name is repeated once more to highlight his importance to the viewers. With an exaggerated clang, the first man opens a circuit board on the side of the building; all sounds in this sequence are, in fact, made much louder than in real life to impress the audience as much as possible. 

Meanwhile, the camera pans across the other men getting out of the car and, looking round, hastily walking up some stone steps. They rush inside a bank (finally, their intent is wholly revealed) and one fires a round of bullets into the ceiling, making a woman scream in fear (these are all typical blockbuster cues used in bank robbery scenes, and they are deployed here to quickly familiarise the audience with the situation). In the corner of the screen, the viewers will notice the guard get knocked down within seconds – he is unimportant and ineffectual against the attack, so much so that we never even see his face. The camera then tracks the clown robbers on a dolly as they run through the bank, to create the sense that the viewer is following along with them and is caught right in the thick of the unfolding events. The motion is continued, but this time backwards so the robbers run towards the screen as they make general chaos and shout at the bank staff against an undertone of far-away screaming. This makes them seem powerful and essentially unstoppable in their advance through the building. There is an element of dark humour as one of the men yanks an employee over and across the counter whilst gruffly yelling “Let’s go, pal, I’m making a withdrawal here!” – the sort of morbid playing around that the more experienced DC viewer would expect of the Joker’s henchmen and, indeed, of the Joker himself.

An extreme close-up of the hand of one of the men on the roof holding a coding pad follows, and then changes to a normal close-up with him in the foreground and with the other robber deeper in the shot, blurred out in a sinister, insidious manner. This setup causes a creeping feeling that something bad is about to happen. After more long shots of the other clown-masked robbers harassing the bank employees, something does, in fact, happen; the man standing behind shoots the first man right in the base of the skull as soon as he is done disabling the alarms. The kill is so quick, realistic and graceless that the sheer blunt shock of it is incredible. The camera rolls after the surviving clown robber as he runs down the corridor alone, and the music picks up pace and volume to match his hurrying footsteps.

A long shot of a bank worker taking off his glasses whilst seated at his desk appears onscreen, and then quickly changes to a close-up of one of the robbers putting a grenade in a hostage’s hand and pulling out the pin, and next changes back to the killer robber running up to an impressive-looking safe. The changes of shot go quicker than ever now as the scene works up to fever pitch, driven on by the soundtrack. The grenade trick is explained quickly, but a side-shot of the other robber holding an impressive hand-drill interrupts it – these technical details are included to give us logical coherency of the plan these people are following. A slow close-up of the same man from behind his banker’s desk as before is shown again, and then a shotgun bullet shatters the glass of his cubicle and kills one of the robbers. The fact that the existence of this gun had not even been hinted at before makes the sudden blast an excellent surprise, and raises the stakes even higher – now the attackers finally have something to contend with. A long shot shows the man standing and walking towards the other robbers; he is now in control, as shown by one of the criminals scrambling away behind a desk. The gun blasts continue; sparks fly, smoke rolls off the barrel, the robbers’ shoes squeak as they struggle to move away practically on all fours. This brief change in power dynamic and the use of sound effects is especially good here in terms of continuing to build interest.

The man shouts at them – the robbers quickly confer and one jumps up and gets wounded – the second jumps out next, knowing the man is out of bullets, and shoots him repeatedly at point-blank range. All this happens within a matter of seconds, but then the camera takes a moment to slowly zoom in on the robber left standing, his mask tilted sideways as he stares at the crumpled business worker metres away. This causes the audience to wonder what’s so special about this particular criminal (of course, having watched the film we know the actor behind that mask is Heath Ledger). There’s another mention of the Joker’s name as we return to the robbers taking care of the safe, and, as before, the one behind shoots the one in front unflinchingly once the job is done. The first man’s shouts of realisation (“No, no–!”) are coldly cut off by the sound of the bullet. Whilst this happens, we are shown only the close-up of the man doing the shooting, and his mask’s smiling, bright mouth and dead, dark eyes only heighten the horror of the situation.

The clowns have complete control now, and the music eases up slightly as we see an extreme close-up of an absolutely preposterous amount of money being shoved into a bag by the surviving robber in the vault. The shot is slightly blurry, perhaps suggesting these criminals’ lust for money is stopping them from seeing or thinking clearly about what they’re doing and how many peoples’ deaths they will end up responsible for at the end of the day. Another rolling dolly shot zooms in on the stack of bags the two robbers have collected, but the camera ends on the face of the previously highlighted clown rather than the actual pile (again making us question his identity). We get a point of view shot from the other man, now standing behind, and the click of a loading gun is heard. The man in front turns slowly and we see a point of view shot from him this time via a reversal. The robber with the gun continues pointing the weapon even though his hands shake a little as he talks. In comparison, the other man is not nervous at all; he looks at his watch nonchalantly and replies in an almost bored tone, even though he is the one being threatened. This interesting psychological dynamic only heightens the tension (and, for some, perhaps forces the realisation of the identity of the last robber before it is fully revealed). After a few close-ups in the form of more reversal point of view shots and the loud shout of “What bus driver?, the scene reaches its special effects-driven climax with a bus loudly and chaotically crashing into the room of the bank. With this, the tension built across the rest of the opening scene is fully paid off in the audience’s eyes although, as we all know, the best plot twist of the opening comes a few minutes later.    

DY