As well as the films mentioned in the previous blog post, I also looked at the opening sequences of:
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010, dir. Edgar Wright)
The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud (2010, dir. Burr Steers)
Superbad (2007, dir. Greg Mottola)
Juno (2007, dir. Jason Reitman)
Lord of War (2005, dir. Andrew Niccol)
Spiderman 2 (2004, dir. Sam Raimi)
The Devil Wears Prada (2006, dir. David Frankel)
Casino Royale (2006, dir. Martin Campbell)
King Arthur (2004, dir. Antoine Fuqua)
Due Date (2010, dir. Todd Phillips)
Black Swan (2010, dir. Darren Aronofsky)
Back to The Future (1985, Robert Zemeckis)
All of these opening sequences reflect the genre or the plot of the film.
Scott Pilgrim Vs the World is slightly different to the other opening sequences I looked at, as it has an opening scene and then a title sequence.
This is an excerpt from an interview between artofthetitle.com and director Edgar Wright about the opening sequence to Scott Pilgrim vs the World (Interview date 3rd January 2011).
"Art of the Title: As the director, at what stage in the process does the decision to use a title sequence occur?
Edgar Wright: In this case, the bulk of the title sequence came late in the day. The film always opened with the studio credits and title of the movie always occurred over the long tracking shot in the living room with the band playing. That was one of the first scenes boarded and pre-vised. But originally all the credit cards were at the end over black. We originally ended on a completely different song too, "In The Long Run" by The Carrie Nations."
Having an opening scene and then a credit sequence is a slightly unusual technique, although it is used in other films. This techique is called a cold open, or teaser. Scott Pilgrim vs the World, in terms of genre is an odd film with mix of animation and real life as well as the video game sound effects and also hard to classify. The film opens with a simple scene of a conversation between a group of friends, and has a little information box pop up next to each character as we see them for the first time and the scene leads to their band playing the song where the title sequence begins. Below is the opening scene and title sequence of Scott Pilgrim vs the World.
(Video from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_BM4KxBJXY&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL8BDECD86FDC21E3E)
King Arthur is another slightly different opening in terms of codes and conventions, it is a flashback as well as a narrative opening, which is a hybrid of two of the types of openings, it is mainly a flashback, but it being shown in the perspective of and narrated by the main character Lancelot. This opening also uses panning of Landscape. Below is a video of the first 10 minutes of King Arthur, I have only focused on the first 4 minutes of this.
Casino Royale (2006, dir. Martin Campbell) is a particularly effective opening, it gives you both sides of Bond's character in the opening sequence, there's the action where he kills a man, but it also shows the smart side where he's one step ahead of his opponent and shoots him without thinking too much about it. Following this scene, there is also a credit sequence. Click here to see the opening scene of Casino Royale, and below is the video of the credit sequence.
Bibliography for this post:
Edgar Wright interview from
http://www.artofthetitle.com/2011/01/03/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world/
updated 3rd January 2011
visited 9th November 2011
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