14. Opening Sequence Class Analysis

How can we analyse the opening title sequence of a film?

A title sequence is the opening introduction to a film giving us an idea of what may be in the film or give us any clues as to what may or may not happen.

Catch Me If You Can opening sequence film task:

Ingredient	Purpose
Production and Cast Credits	Telling us the companies, directors, actors etc. that are involved with the film.
Cartoon overview of the whole film	Giving us a very brief overview of the theme and what is going to happen in the film. The type of characters etc. Without giving away too much to the audience.
The main characters	Giving us an idea of what the characters are like
Setting	Where the film is going to be set and how it ties in with everything else.
Genre	Giving us an idea of what the film is about and the kind of things that may happen
Mood or atmosphere	This adds to the genre in that we see whether the there is any conflict or anything significant between the characters.

Memento:

The opening title sequence for the film Memento begins with a credit sequence, which introduces the audience to the main cast and crew of the film e.g., the main character played by “Guy Pearce” and the director of the film “Christopher Nolan”. The transition used to introduce the text is a slow fade and the text is presented in a blue font, which could be suggesting (connote) a theme like sadness of the character or a theme in the film. The mood that is created by the non-diegetic sound which is a contributor to the theme and atmosphere of the opening also suggesting the sad element as the music is slow and doesn’t suggest violence or happiness in the film at first. The music builds up from the start, increasing the tension and mood.  The character’s life at the start of the film suggests is full of violence and not exactly happy as he just killed a man therefore his equilibrium isn’t exactly normal and it also suggest that he is quite a cold and heartless person. The enigma in his life is that he has gaps in his memory therefore he took a picture of the man he just shot in order to remember it. This also ties in with the title of the film as he keeps it as a memento in order to remember what he just did. In this opening scene it is going backwards in order to show to the audience how the man came to be lying dead on the floor and the character taking a picture. It starts off with the main character holding a picture and then the scene gets rewound back to it going back into his camera, then the guns goes back into his hand and then we see that he actually shot the man. This then makes more sense for us as it shows that the reason he is taking the picture isn’t because his characters is a detective or something but another reason which gets the audience intrigued as to what is going to happen next. In one part of the opening sequence is a scene where the character is in a room and the whole screen is black and white and the characters deep in thought and trying to piece together where  he is as he has the gap in his memory that need filling.