ISA - Opening Sequence Report

Opening Sequence Analysis

              The opening sequence starts with a great shot of the whole house of the protagonist; this suggests that the main character or the target is in this house. Then there is a close up inside of the protagonist’s house of him picking up the keys which clearly highlights that he is about to leave his house and is getting ready to do so. After that there is quite a big jump to the protagonist opening the door. Looking at this now I think that the jump is a bit too big and too improve that it might have been a good idea to fade one scene into the other so it would look more like the time has passed since he have walked to the door rather than showing two separate scenes together. When the protagonist is opening the door and walking out of his house there is a nice point of view shot showing the audience what the character is seeing.

               We can see the character, how he looks and how he is dressed from top to bottom as we have several shots to show the protagonist from different angles. Because of the protagonist's costume the bag on his left shoulder it is clear that he is a student, we can see that he is quite geeky and innocent as well from the glasses and his facial expression. As the protagonist walks out of the house, he walks a little further until he reaches into the pocket for his phone. There we have a nice over the shoulder shot so that the viewers can see the message which says ‘Meet me at the fountain.’

 As the protagonist reads the message he starts walking again and as he reaches the gate from his yard he looks around as if he was looking if someone else is there. When he walks towards the little gate there is a point of view shot of the protagonist which has an effect as if someone was watching him. When he turns left and keeps walking there is quite a few tracking shots of him for example birds eye view and the side view. This is where it would make the audience feel like they are the ones following the character looking at him from different angles.

 

When the protagonist turns the first corner we can see straight away two guys talking to each other and when they notice the protagonist they say something to him and push him a little bit which makes him turn around straight away and try to run away. The antagonists chase after him and this is shown from far away with a side view shot. In my opinion it looks a bit like they are chasing him because he stole something or said something as it doesn't look very tense and the music sequence doesn't help as it is a quite happy contrapuntal sound which makes it look more like the scenario where he stole something and they just chased after him. I think that maybe if the sound was a bit more harsh and parallel to what is happening it would look much better as the antagonists chasing the other character are supposed to be bullies and be quite dangerous which doesn't seem that way in the sequence. In the chasing scene the lighting gets darker very quickly which might look to some viewers as if the characters were running all day, however I think that it takes away from the quality of the opening sequence as the chasing in most action films are not usually that long and I don’t think you can ever run a whole day without getting tired or feeling sick. As the lighting gets even darker you start to see the edited parts which made it look lighter, but it also looks a bit fainted and mushy and you can notice that very easily as the lighting looks much more different to the previous scenes in the sequence. Again there is a camera shot from the point of view of the protagonist which seems like he’s looking behind to see how far the antagonists are.

              It was very late when we filmed it so the lighting was a lot darker at the end. We tried to make it a bit lighter which has made that shot look hurried and unclear during the end of the chase scene. 







The end scene is quite good as the fact that we didn't show any scenes leading up to that moment creates enigma so the audience have to look for a logical explanation of how the protagonist has landed on the ground. The lighting here also gets a bit in the way because if the protagonist was going to wake up the next morning it is quite unlikely that the sky would be so bright and shiny. 

 The close up to the eye of the protagonist is very effective as it points out what the audience needs to focus on and we can see something floating in his eye which suggests that something has happened to him overnight. The yellow and blue staff floating in his eye could have been more improved as it looks a bit like a mistake made by the editor because it is not that clear what it’s supposed to be, but then again it also could attract the audience because they might want to get to know the whole story.