Film Opening Analysis

Film Opening Analysis

Movie: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Genre/hybrid gene:  Sci fi, Action, Adventure 

The opening scene of Star Wars begins with the title of the movie shown on a galactic background, followed by incoming shots with dim lighting and spastic shots of zooming ships. the shot cuts quickly to the same type of dim lighting and quick bursts of quick lighting showing storm troopers in a uniform line. The lighting gives and illusion os suspense as it seems something is about to happen and the random burst of light lighting up the room engages the audience to see what happens next. In one of the burst of light, the room is lit up and the storm troopers are shown to be standing still. The way their bodies move and the way the room is lit up it makes it seem as if they are in one of the spaceships that were shown to be zooming through in previous scenes. The screen turns black and opens up again to a panoramic view of a dark area. As of right now, the opening scene has been multiple quick shots that cut to different scenes to give an aura of darkness and suspense. Along the shots there is a recurring colour scheme of dark colours such as whites, blues, and black. Nonetheless, the music paired with these shots gives a feel of thrill and rush as it is quick beats. All of these things put together gives the audience a reason to keep watching and engages them to keep watching more. Every scene makes the viewer ache for more. 41 seconds into the film there is a change of scenario with the same recurring theme of darkness, but now the colour scheme has changed and there is human interaction. The first thing we see a close up shot of two hands meeting with an object enclosed in a leather case. The scene begins calmly, the first words said being, "This will begin to make things right." This beings to show that the movie is opening in a state of danger and uncertainty, and the goal to be attained throughout the movie is making thins right or resolving what is going on.  The calmness of conversation is interrupted by an abrupt outburst by R2-D2. There is an attack where the clip turns to a lot of action and rage. At this stage in the opening, we have seen that the movie begins in the desert at night. This gives an illusion of the themes of darkness and loneliness, isolation. The scenes we are seeing are very powerful and give a feeling of curiosity as viewers who have not seen past movies are confused and intrigued as to why these events are occurring. However, the scenes in these first 2 minutes are fragmented and jump around to different scenes all occurring at once to lead up to the attack where all of the scenes meet to coincide with each other. As stated before, the movie opens slowly and there is not much action but leads up to a faster, action packed pace. Lastly, there are a lot of close up shots and panoramic shots used in the opening scene.