Godfather Opening
The opening starts with a monologue from one of the characters. This introduces the character and we get to know a bit about him and the background of the story. The scene is low key lighting which implies that this is a dark tale and the character is portrayed as a protagonist. For the british crime drama film, our group wanted to create a dark atmosphere, I want the audience to know a little bit about the protagonist, Sean much like the character who does the monologue in this opening. The characters are dressed in suits, stereotypical to a gangster film.

The film opens unconventionally, with a narrative from one of the characters in the film with a black background. The black background connotes death, mystery and possible evil. The narrator begins by saying, in an italian accent, "I believe in America", suggesting the location of the film, and we fade in to see the man who is speaking. The camera begins with a close up as he talks to the camera and the camera zooms out very slowly whilst he tells us about his daughter's rape. The mise en scene is all dark, with only the man's collar being the only colour of white, possibly suggesting some kind of purity in the man. As we zoom out, however, we discover with an over the shoulder shot, that the man is talking to someone else and not us. The camera stops zooming, and the man who was speaking begins to cry. This shows the flaws of the protagonist: emotional outrage for his daughter and his drinking habit. The camera then tracks and focuses on a close up of two men whispering to each other, but we cannot hear what they say. The film style is similar to what we want to create, especially with the main character Sean. As he will be a gangster in the film. The opening has infulenced the killing scene at the beginning the most on how the characters are killed. The main character shows no remorse for his actions, much like the characters in the Godfather.



Goodfellas Opening

The opening of Goodfellas is a violent and fast paced one, as the movie opens in the present with three gangsters killing someone in the back of their car. It then switches to the past and the main character Henry Hill gives a voiceover to the audience, narrating the whole film. This can suggest that he is omniscient and the audience begins to trust him as we see the world through his narrative. There are diegetic sounds such as the car on the road, gunshots and stabbing sfx. There is another diegetic sound which is the sound coming from the back of the car; this creates a sense of suspense as the audience wants to know what is making the noise. The characters wear formal suits, which suggest to the audience that they are working or they are even gangsters. Gangsters have connotations of wealth, success and ‘hitman’ related activities. There is low lighting for most of the opening to show a sense of dark and evil background around the characters and their motives and actions. For example, in the murder scene in the opening, we see a red filter being used in the background and this has negative connotations of blood, injury and anger. This suggests to us that the Gangsters murdered for injury or they were angered by something, possibly angered by the victim.

In the beginning there is a long shot of a moving black car, it is also a tracking shot as it follows the car and then proceeds to pan. The next shot is a medium shot of three men in a car, Henry being closer to the camera along with Jimmy, although Tommy is a little out of focus, this may suggest that he is not as important as the two men in the front seats. A long shot follows and there is more dialogue and the camera then switches to a medium shot of a person in the trunk of the car. The three men murder the person in the trunk and Henry shuts the trunk. There is a close up shot which you could say introduces Henry as a character. We then hear a narrative from him and we go back in time.

We decided to implement this idea of the movie opening with a scene from the middle of the movie to catch the audience's attention and to keep the suspense going, to keep them wondering what is going to happen next. We used this idea because we thought that we didn't want to do a movie cliché and we wanted to do something strange, to confuse and attract the audience to the movie.


Dead Man's Shoes
Our groups film plot opening is closely related to Dead Man's Shoes' plot. Our film is inspired by the plot of Dead Man's Shoes based on one mans adventures to avenge his father. It is appropriate for the british social realist genre by using small real villages and rural areas as their locations. This gives a view of the scarce areas in britain and appeals to the audience for its settings, plot and description of characters and how they are portrayed.