The Opening Scene of a Movie
February 16, 2021
Let me ask you a question; what’s the most important part of an interview? If you said first impressions, you’re on the right track. Getting your interviewer to see you as different as everyone else (different in a positive way, mind you) is one of the most important parts of the entire interview. But we’re not here to talk interviews, we’re here to talk movies (as per usual). Much like an interview, the opening scene of a movie is an extremely important point, as it engages the viewer and makes them start asking enough questions for them to want to continue viewing the film until the credits start rolling. Audiences often make up their mind about a movie from the first 10-15 minutes of it, although their opinion could very well change as the movie continues.
So what are some good opening scenes? There are a plethora of examples, but we’ll just list a few. To start, let’s look at John Carpenter’s The Thing from 1982, which tells the story of an alien organism that can assimilate another organism and replicate its bodily structure perfectly. We open the movie with a shot of an environment that looks extremely cold, snowy, and miserable. We then cut to a shot of a husky running through the snow at a very high speed, seeming to have a goal in mind. We then see that a helicopter is actually following the husky, and starts shooting at it. Just from this beginning alone, questions are raised, mostly questioning why they are shooting at a dog. I also love the use of a husky in this shot. While we learn that there is an American research team stationed in the Arctic, we learn that they have three methods of travel. Helicopter, Snow Cat, and (if a last resort) huskies. Showing the scene of a dog getting shot at even though it’s an obvious asset to anyone who is stationed there, a very subtle way of foreshadowing the Thing’s eventual method of psychological manipulation by destroying all methods of transportation later in the film. It takes over a scientist and he destroys the Snow Cat, Chopper, and kills the rest of the dogs. As the scene continues, the dog arrives at the American research station, where we see the researchers inside questioning the appearance of a helicopter. It lands, and they go outside to greet the unannounced guest, and he starts firing his gun at the dog, easily putting the lives of the men in danger. He grabs a grenade and tries throwing it at the dog but slips and it lands near the chopper, blowing it up. The surviving man from the helicopter is shot by a researcher, as the dog lives, hiding from the man who was shooting at it.
So this scene is pretty great, as I said before, it raises at least one question that keeps us engaged while watching, and also uses very subtle foreshadowing to detail the antagonists’ motivation later in the movie. It’s also worth mentioning that the helicopter crew were part of a Norweigian research group not too far from the main characters at the American research station. After the chopper explodes, he stands up from covering his head, and says to the Americans “Fjern faen fra den tingen. Det er ikke en hund, det er en slags ting! Den etterligner en hund, den er ikke ekte! BLI BORT DU IDIOTER!” which translates to “Get the hell away from that thing. That’s not a dog, it’s some sort of thing! It’s imitating a dog, it isn’t real! GET AWAY YOU IDIOTS!”. The thing that’s great about that part is that the filmmakers didn’t translate it in the actual movie, I had to look it up, so, even though you can hear clear panic in his voice, you have no idea why.
It’s not just horror movies that should have good opening scenes, every movie should have them. Let’s look at another one, in 2014, the movie Whiplash was released by director Damien Chazelle. We open the movie with complete darkness, as the movie title shows up. During the movie title and darkness, we hear a snare lift-off being played. A snare lift-off is where the drummer starts slow and quiet and progressively gets very fast and loud. At the instance of the last hit, we cut to a far away hallway shot of a practice room. As the drummer practices, the camera slowly goes closer and closer to the room. As the camera enters the room, the drummer stops, and apologizes to a character we don’t see for being in the drum room. We see the character is a teacher who is standing in the doorway of the room, most likely implying that the camera shot down the hallway was from his perspective. The teacher asks the drummer his name, and what year he is. We learn that his name is Andrew Neiman and that he is a freshman at a prestigious music school named Shaffer University in New York City. Through his delivery of dialogue we can very easily find out how awkward the character is. Through Fletcher’s tone and dialogue, we see that he doesn’t really care at all about making small talk, he’s there to test Neiman, and gives him orders on what Neiman will play for him. As Neiman starts getting into it, closing his eyes and showing a face of slight pain or discomfort at the difficulty he’s having with playing the requested material, the door slams shut. Neiman opens his eyes, and Fletcher appears to have left. Neiman, looking defeated, puts his hands down. Fletcher comes back into the room, but just says that he forgot his jacket. He says nothing else, grabs his jacket, and leaves, with the last shot of the scene being Neiman looking defeated, still staring at where Fletcher was standing.
Through this scene, we learn very important information on the main character through just the visuals themselves. He’s a drummer, he’s young, he’s talented (although I suppose that depends on your interpretation of the practice playing). One other slightly subtle detail that they show instead of telling is the fact that Neiman seems like a loner. It’s late at night, and he isn’t playing with anyone else in a fairly big space for practice. Then when Fletcher arrives, we can instantly see the dynamic between the two characters that will be portrayed and developed through the movie. With Fletcher being the authoritarian force that pushes Neiman into the great drummer that he aspires to be, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing for Neiman himself.
There is one more scene to look at, but I’m going to save that for another article because there’s certainly a lot to talk about with it. If you have any questions, comments, fact corrections, etc. feel free to comment, thanks for reading!
