What choices are open to film makers in how they begin their films? What techniques are employed? and what effects are created?
There are many choices open to film makers in how they begin their films, these range from variation in camera shots or angles to clever use of diegetic and non diegetic sound in order to emphasize to the audience what the film maker is trying to show them.
The film City of god begins with quick fade ins and fade outs of extreme close up shots of a knife being sharpened accompanied with the amplified diegetic sound of the knife being sharpened as it is happening on screen.
The image alone could put the audience in a state of unrest as knives are not something that they would associate with a city of god.
The scene quickly develops showing quick cut shots of an extreme close up of a chicken and then extreme close ups of chickens being prepared for human consumption. This cycle between the two shows the audience the illusion that the chicken is becoming nervous as it has just seen its fellow chickens killed and cooked, the director achieves this with his quickening of the cycle between the two scenes.
The music accompanying this piece sounds like the happy celebration music that would be heard at a for of festival held in that place in the world. The music is eventually shown to be diegetic and not non diegetic as the audience would initially think with the quick visual fade in and fade out of acoustic guitars playing, this shows that while for the chicken this is indeed a gruesome ans sinister scene for the humans present this is a happy occasion with music dancing and food.
The nervous chicken is initially tied down by its leg while all of the above is taking place, soon however the chicken finds a way to escape. Upon escaping a man shouts his displeasure at the chickens escape, this man is later revealed to be the leader of this large group of people, initially it appears that the loss of this chicken is a terrible thing as the instant the chicken escapes the happy music stops playing and a man shouts out after the chicken. This assumption is quickly proven wrong when an extreme close up of the man who shouted shows him to be laughing because this has given him and his gang something fun to do, the gang quickly draw guns and set off after the chicken running through the streets and firing at said chicken. Whilst this is happening an establishing shot show another rooftop of a nearby building with people still enjoying themselves and acting normally, this shows the audience that many people running through the streets with guns is not an unusual thing but in fact an every day occurrence, this is one way that the director can explain a vital part of a story without having a character explain it or using a vast amount of an audiences time, this is a very clever use of camera shots/angles to show this place as a whole and how the society that lives there has adapted to situations that would horrify most people.
The film maker could also use narrative devices within his/her opening minutes of their film, for example dream sequences, The film Kung fu panda uses this opening and it is used in a clever way.
The opening to kung fu panda uses an entirely different animation than is used in the rest of the film, the dream sequence uses a traditional 2D animation type as used in many cartoons whereas the rest of the film uses 3D CGI animation this allows the audience to clearly distinguish between the pandas dream world and reality.
