This week, my partner and I decided to do a psychological romance genre film. Now that we have chosen our genre, we are going to analyze other film openings to get inspiration for our project. We already have an initial idea, but seeing these film openings opens our minds to specific elements that tell the audience what type of movie it is.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) film opening showed the life of the main character and how he feels miserable after a heartbreak. He seems to be traveling in a train and arriving at a beach where the female lead is introduced. The techniques used in this opening tell the audience what genre and type of film this is. Some things that were appealing to me were the use of color grading and color theory, as I said before in previous blogs, I want to integrate color into my film opening. I think this film is a great example of doing so, and it was surprising to me that they used it at the beginning of the movie to introduce the female character (Clementine). At the end of the excerpt, we can see Clementine in the distance, but even though she is far away, she is wearing an orange jacket; compared to the rest of Joel's(male lead) world, she is like a ray of color in a world of sadness. This makes the audience know that she is going to be an important person in his life, especially when Joel is narrating his feelings to the audience. I also found it interesting that the shots were not that complicated in a way, for example, some of the shots are handheld and sometimes appear shaky, it kind of feels like you are following the character's life in a documentary type of way. After doing some research on that, yes, it is intentional to mimic the idea that you are in a memory; after all, that is what the movie is all about: memories.
Soooo, guess what, Cambridge, it's really hard to find psychological romance films. But anyhow,
Vanilla Sky (2001) kind of falls into this category in the sense that the male character questions nature, reality, and his feelings with a woman. The film's opening had some similar aspects in camera techniques as to Eternal Sunshine of the Spottles Mind, they both use that handheld and distortion look when the audience has to understand the charcters feelings. What was interesting about this opening was the way we can learn about who this character is without the need for dialogue or a narrative. When the male character takes off a piece of hair, which is most likely a gray hair, we learn that he wants to look perfect. We can actually see by his facial expressions that he is a little mad about that piece of grey hair. In the film's opening, we did not get to see the female character, but we did get to see a little bit about what this movie is about. At the end of the opening, we learn that the whole moment he was dreaming about waking up and getting ready to go on his day. This also leaves the audience intrigued. I can confirm for myself, I have not watched this movie, but after seeing the opening im intrigued about what is to happen next.
her (2013), the film opening for this movie was very interesting, I was interested in how it was only filmed in one location, and it looked like a single one take. With so little movement, the audience can tell this film is about artificial intelligence and love. Also, out of the three film openings I have discussed, this is the first one to include the title! and at the beginning too. The font and lowercase used for the title were a specific choice to show intimacy and softness. The font chosen gives the vibe of a person's writing, which is what the AI is trying to do: replace human characteristics. I think this film is very simple and straightforward, with its theme of this film. This is a great example to take inspiration from for my film opening.
Reflection:
Honestly, I did not expect it to be this hard to find films that are fully in the psychological romance genre; now that I compare these, they are more of a psychological sci-fi genre. But for our film opening, we don't want to do that, as it will take a lot of editing and other elements, so we want to stick to real-life situations. For me, the film I took most inspiration from was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This opening illustrates both character problems (hence the psychological element) and the other character who is going to light up the world of the main character (hence the romance). And I think the techniques of camera work, editing, and color grading are elements that we can incorporate in our film opening to tell the audience what type of film they are diving into.
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