Watching Documentary

I watched a program called "Watching" documentary. This was a fantastic opportunity and I realized the importance of the opening title sequence. 

People are coming to cinema, mostly because of the trailer. It provides the greatest scene of the movie and arise the interest. However, the opening sequence is the one, which make the audience watch the rest of the movie with attention and breath holding. 

Journalist who conducted the program said, that if the audience missed the beginning of the 'Psycho', they will be watching fundamentally different movie. These, first 5 minutes are the most important. It needs to catch the audience and deliver emotion like satisfaction and curiosity.

Thomas Sutcliffe said "Films need to seduce their audience into long term commitment. While there are many types of seduction, the temptation to go for instant arousal is almost irresistible'.  So in other words, he meant that the audience needs to be draw into the film. It needs to be enough shocking to make then find out more.

Therefore, there is a greatest risk to live up to opening. It could be hard to keep the same level in the opening and keep it up for the rest of the movie. Mostly, after the title sequence the emotion just fading out and the audience become bored. That is why it is so important to keep the feeling of curiosity in the audience.

The ' good beginning must take the audience feel that it doesn't know nearly enough yet, and the same time make sure that it doesn't know too little'. What does it mean is that the opening needs to provide enough importation the audience what is it going to be about, but not too much to keep them watching till the end. It needs to lead audience smoothly and most truly and at the same time introduce the most important characters and setting.  

Also one of the director said that the most effectively opening doesn’t contain any dialog. It shows lots of things which gives a hind to the audience, but they are the part of the movement. 

Stanley Kauffmann said something about the classical opening. It starts from establishing long shot of the city, and then it goes close to the particular building, close up on the window, reception and office where character is sitting. It works very effectively because it creates a feeling of coming inside the character’s life. This let the audience gets a clear understanding of the story line.

'A favorite trick of Film Noir' is to put the end as the beginning of the movie. It is made with great purpose. The audience already knows what happened, but they want to watch more to understand why films rich that kind of 'ending'.

One of the famous openings is 'Touch of Evil'. All title sequence is taken in one shot and it is about 4 minutes long. During this time, camera keeps moving, changing levels and angles. It takes them, few weeks to film this scene without any problems. This opening switches the audience attention. At the beginning everything is saying that the most important characters drive the car, but suddenly the camera starts to focus on the walking couple. Also the studio put the music and title on it. Orson Welles didn't like it at all, but it has to stay like that.