Saturday 27 October 2012

Analysis of Opening Sequence of Blade


When the film starts the first part of the scene that you see are credits. Before this you see the ‘New Cinema Line’ logo to show that this was part of the production in making the film.


The way that the credits are shown is so that they fade into each other. This means that when credit is up the next one starts to appear and then the one that was originally there starts to fade. The colours that are used are red and black for the credits. This is to show that the film is a thriller and that it will be gruesome. I have seen the New Line logo in black and white before so this shows that companies will sometimes adapt their logo / ident to the genre.

 
Once the scene starts the only wording on the screen is in the first shot and is the year ‘1967’. The reason that this has been put in at the beginning of the film is for the audience to know what sort of time this film was set in. This then allows the audience to know why things in the film happen the way that they do, because they would think that it is in that time period and then things that are around now would not be available then.

The first part of the scene that you see is a black woman come through hospital doors, lying on a hospital bed being pushed by doctors and nurses. This shot that you see is a deep focus. This shows that there was something else being focused on and then the main part of the scene came into focus. The part was being focused on before was the date ‘1967’ that was written across the bottom of the screen. Behind this was an establishing shot of the hospital. You could see that this was an establishing shot because it was setting for the scene. You could tell that it was a hospital because there was a nurse walking around and also the surroundings of the shot made out that it was in a hospital. For example there was a sign on the door that read ‘EMERGENCY’. This is another indication that it was a hospital.



If you then look at the next shot of the scene you see the woman being push through the double doors that read ‘EMERGENCY’. This shot is a two shot and a deep focus this is because the doors that she is getting pushed through were in the background of the shot before and then in the next shot it comes into focus to show the women coming through on the bed. This is also a two shot, as there are two people in the shot consisting of, what seems to be, the paramedic from the ambulance and the patient (the woman on the bed). She has her hand on the paramedic’s arm. This shows a connection between the characters.  This however does not show a relationship between the two characters but only that she wants help and that the paramedic want to give it to her.

 

The next shot in the scene is a close up of the woman on the bed. In this shot you can see that she has a fatal injury on her neck. In the shot you can see that her eyes have turned pale. This then gives a scary effect to the audience. You could say that in the shot she looks distorted and uncomfortable. This would be because of the pain that she is going through, but the effect on the audience is very scary and gruesome. The use of a close up in this shot really effective as it shows the emotion and the fear in her face. This then allows the audience to connect with the character.



The next interesting shot that we see in this scene is when the woman is in the operating room we see a personal ID card fall on to the floor. The shot that the director has chosen to film the ID card is in a close up shot so that the audience can see what is written on the ID card. We can see that there is a picture of her on the ID card; this shows that it belongs to her. Also on the ID card you can see dates but it is not clear to see what the dates are for because it is written in small writing. There is also blood splattered on he ID card that means that it could be of relevance later in the film.

 
If we look further on in the scene we see a POV shot from the woman’s perspective of after giving birth the nurse holding the baby and taking it away. We can tell that this is a POV shot because it is blurry and because she is in pain, her vision would not be good. Another reason why you can tell that it is a POV is because of the positioning of the camera. By this I mean that the camera is where the woman is so therefore it looks like she is looking at the camera.



The next shot in the seen is the woman looking at the camera, which is meant to look as if she is looking at the baby being taken away from her. She has her hand out as if she wants to hold the baby, but she never gets to hold the baby.                    


When this scene is over we see a few more credits and titles.

 

Then it moves on to an establishing shot of different areas of a town. The use of an establishing shot is to set the scene of the film or the next scene. When the establishing shots are playing on the screen there are credits in the font that were used for the main credits in the beginning.

From this opening, I think we can take some useful ideas. We are dealing with a traumatic event in our opening, and the POV filming used here was very effective for making the viewer feel immediately part of the scene. We start with a dramatic event which we are not clear about, which is also applicable to our ideas, and shows that a 'shock' opening works quite well.

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