Analysing Film Openings 5

North By North West film poster

I briefly watched North By North West's Opening Sequence because I admire Alfred Hitchcock's style and was intrigued by how he began this film especially as it has elements of the Thriller genre.

I really enjoyed watching the beginning as Hitchcock establishes the location immediately. I enjoyed the short animation before, in green, as the lines were drawn and smoothly transitioned through a fade effect to the reflection of traffic on a skyscraper. The audience understand that it is a city by targeting specific buildings, like sky scrapers, using the reflections on the windows to see ongoing traffic, targeting specific streets and vehicles i.e. America's notorious yellow taxi cabs, targeting busy crowds and specific people to display the hardship, busy and almost unkind atmosphere a city can be. I found this really insightful and an inspiration to start the film focusing on location first, especially as I would like to recreate a busy city atmosphere too.

I've been thinking that, to also target London and make it seem clearer, I could film on a rainy day - not only is it pathetic fallacy for a negative event or happening, but England's weather is notorious for rain.

Here's a BBC weather report

This would be a really interesting shot to take, to establish the location through a LS and window reiterating that the audience is watching, although I'm not sure if I would be able to because of the location and time it would take to travel would be very challenging. It might be too far fetched for our opening sequence at the moment but it's an interesting idea for an establishing shot.

I really want to included shots with London's red buses as it helps establish the location. I also would like to take shots of crowds holding umbrellas to help show that it is raining through the ms-en-scene even if the camera doesn't pick it up and to display the effect that nature has over man; helping create a realistic atmosphere.

However, I can't rely on the weather as it's unpredictable and we could waist valuable filming time. It would be ideal to film in the rain as the pathetic fallacy would be perfect, although not ideal filming conditions, I am willing to not film in the rain if it provides good filming that Patrycja could work with in editing.