1) What does Thomas Sutcliffe mean when he says "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".
It needs to grab the audience within the first five minutes, it needs to announce as much ambition as the beginning of the film itself. The audience needs to know there in for some type of ride.
2) According to Director Jean Jacques Beineix, what are the risks of 'instant arousal'?
If it starts strong, it brings up the big question, what to do next? and you take the risk if you never answer the questions, which is the whole problem with making films.
3) Explain why "a good beginning must make the audience feel that it doesn't know too little"
The audience will make very early judgement of how there meant to feel, the film establishing too many things at once. It instructs the audience on how they should watch the film as follows; to get the audience on your wavelength. It makes the audience feel like the film has started without them, and that they to scurry to catch up, which will capture their attention, it's meant to shock.
4) What does critic Stanley Kauffmann describe as the classic opening? Why does it work?
It starts with an establishing shot then close up of building, it tells us where its taking place, the occupation of the hero, the organisation of the world, everything was in place. Opening of the film should lead audience into story smoothly telling them the nature of the story and what the story is.
5)Why is Kyle Cooper's title sequence to the film Seven so effective?
It tunes in viewers, it says right away that this movie is going to hit you on the head. It became the first scene of the movie; it introduced characters, foreshadowed, and proved more influential than the film itself.
6) What did Orson Welles want to achieve with his opening to the film A Touch of Evil? What did universal studios do to it? Why?
Orson intended it to be seen without credits or title music, to plunge audience right into the story without time to prepare. The studio was more cautious; they didn't understand the opening shot, they put credits underneath for final cut, so effect was lost. When Orson saw that they had done, he wrote a 58 page memo, but the studio won the battle. In doing so it blunted Orson's charm for originality. The sequence itself was his best argument, it showed he wasn't able to just control the machinery of film making but the audience itself.
7) What is meant by "a favourite trick of film noir?" What is the trick?
It feels like the destination rather than the departure point.
8) How does the opening to the film The Shining create suspense?
Its pictures, the second screen we see the film is full of omens, everything tells us that these people are travelling in the wrong direction, only when we see where the film is heading that we can signpost its destination without giving anything away, always have more to reveal, the music tells us that not everything is what it seems, little things stat to go wrong.
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