WATCHING In todays lesson we were watching a documentary called "watching" which was about film titles. "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"- Thomas Sutcliffe. This quote is talking about grabbing your audience in the first few minutes in a film. One man said "if the first page of the script does not give you a hard on throw it away". With lots of films the begging is vital. For example if you miss the begging of Psycho then the rest of the film will not have the same effect on you as it does on those who saw the famous shower scene. On the other hand Jean jacques a french director argues the risks of having 'instant arousal' are the rest of film has to then live up to the begging of the film. A film has to go somewhere after the begging and if the begging was to good then the rest of the film could be a disappointment because it might not live up to the begging. A film is not just two minutes of an amazing opening but its an hour and a half movie which needs to keep your audience going. A good begging should make the audience feel like they don't know too much but at the same time they don't know to little. This is important because if an audience know the plot in the first few minutes then thats it the film is ruined for them but if they don't understand it at all then they might be annoyed and not try to understand it therefore they will have a boring ride. If the audience knows something but not everything then they will be on your side because they will want to stay and find out. Some directors start the film with the ending so that the audience are guessing throughout the film how the ending works. Stanley Kauffmann says the classic opening is a establishing shot of a city- close up of a building- camera rising up the building- go inside a window, past the reception office- ending on the main character at his or hers desk. From this we know the location, we know what job this character has. We know a little bit about the character by his or hers job. For example if the main character was in a big fancy building then we know they are quite high up in their job therefore they are probably quite motivated. Normally the best openings have no dialogue. The miss en scene and camera shots should tell you a lot. The shining opening is a classic example of a good no dialogue opening. The camera following the car makes us seem like predators. They are in the middle of nowhere which tells us they can not escape and if they do no one will be able to safe them. The music is very creepy which makes the audience aware that this will not be a funny film. This is all done through mise en scene and camera angles. Kyle cooper's title sequence to seven is very good because it gets you prepared for a gory film. The title sequence does not tell you much but it shows us this film will be about investications and murders due to quick shots of dead people and lots of newspaper reports. It is quite a shocking title sequence but it gets you ready. Orson Wells's title sequence caused a lot of stress for the studio that made it becuase Orson wanted no soundtrack on the opening sequence and no titles because he wanted the audience to plunge straight into the film and get rid of anything that would make it feel like a movie. The studio put a score in the opening sequence but Orson argued over this and eventually had it his way.