Sunday 5 December 2010

Analysis of Film Openings 2

The other film opening I’m going to analyse is the opening sequence for the new David Fincher film "The Social Network". The film starts with a two shot of a young man and a young woman sitting facing each other, at a very neutral angle that suggests no character dominance or submission. The colour scheme of the scene is a very "Fincheresque" green colour, closely resembling the green of a beer bottle. This image backs up the inference that they are in a bar, we also here muffled talking in the background which all but confirms our theory of a bar scene. Next we get a lot of over-shoulder shots, signalling conversation. The conversation is initiated by the woman, but is quickly interrupted by the man with a new topic of conversation, the woman accepts the conversation change, a small show of submission, but also a showing of maybe a little bit of arrogance on the side of the man. We start to build a character profile for both the man and the woman. If we dissect the conversation we notice that almost all of the lines that the female character is given are questions even though we join the conversation halfway through. The eye movements are very different also, the male characters eyes continually wander throughout the scene whereas the female's are very often transfixed on the man. The only significant change in angle is a very short shot when the woman gets up from the table to leave straight after breaking up with the man, the man is shown in a high angle shot showing submission. Straight after very slow piano music starts playing, often shown to signify extreme sadness. This film excels at showing emotion in even the most emotionless of people.


No comments:

Post a Comment