Analysing different film openings

I've analyzed the film openings of the three movies '300', 'Mean Streets and 'Blade II' concluding similarities and differences between them in my conclusion.

Mean Streets:

• Starts of with Warner Bros. Logo and blank black screen. – red writing
• Starts with voice-over of man
• Close up of man waking up from sleep, free-hand camera movement
• Police sirens in the background and sound of cars etc. urban background
• Camera follows him through the room and when he looks at himself in the mirror
• Music starts abruptly as he puts his head on his pillow with jump-cuts and zooms into his face (close-up). The music sounds old fashioned
• Shot goes to next scene of a projector, camera still moving in a freehand fashion
• Shot then changes to an olden film
• The name of the film ‘Mean Streets’ then appears on the screen in big red writing then shows all the names and credits while a film plays in the background of random men. Footage looks old fashioned.
• Slow paced

300:

• Starts with black background and blood splattering, with the directors names etc (credits) – red writing
• War-like music and instruments for music
• Pictures of horses with men on them who have harpoons sticking out of their bodies
• Names are on the horses and the camera quickly zooms out to more horses which have other names
• Fast paced
• Animated
• About a third of the way through the name of the film (300) appears in big red writing
• Names of cast then appear

Blade II:

• Starts with blank black screen with red writing and an action kind of melody in the background and logo ‘New Line Cinema’
• The camera then appears to be moving sideways as a new scene slowly transitions into the screen, the new scene is blurry in the background but there are chains hanging that are in focus. A voice-over then comes in – side pan?
• The voice-over introduces himself as ‘Blade’ (the main character)
• The scene then cuts into a hospital scene – again transitioning from the side giving it a train like effect
• The camera continues to move to the right throughout the trailer
• A lot of close ups of different activities but conceals who’s doing it, just shows the object etc.
• Red writing then appears again with names
• Close-ups of a lot of different weapons
• At the end the title of the film then appears ‘Blade II’ in a font made out of blades.

All three openings are similar as the genre maybe similar, they all may include violence because they all starts with black dark background with red big writing which represents violence, danger, gore maybe. ‘Mean Streets’ and ‘Blade II’ start with a logo whereas 300 doesn’t and they both have a lot of close-ups of different things or people, maybe to establish the personality of the character, what he looks like or who he is. In the 300’s case it’s just a long sequence of credits but with pictures in the background of gory war images. Mean Streets and Blade II have voice-overs which may also be used to establish the characters.

 

Rafial Talukdar