Opening title sequences

 Opening Title Sequences 

The Shining and Seven analysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiV3J_e977Q

The shining is a psychological horror and mystery film made in the 1980s directed by Stanley Kubrick. Just by watching the opening sequence we can already tell it is going to be thriller because of the setting, genre, titles, and introduction to characters.  

In first place, visually we can observe very normal and dull shots of a car driving through some cliffs which seems like a long and boring journey next to these wonderful and beautiful views of the mountains. This car shot continues and looks like a never ending car journey on a road where barely any cars are passing - this signifies that the car is going somewhere quite isolated where someone wouldn’t usually go. Immediately, there is a juxtaposition between the visuals and the sound. It is very simple however very effective to the audience. There is beautiful scenery and under a normal circumstance it would be beautiful to enjoy however the soundtrack on top of it creates a sense of eerie and unsettling. The music in the opening sequence starts straight away, it consists of a very low brass instrument in the minor key which immediately sets an uncomfortable and disturbing tone to the movie. Not only does the music create an unsettling mood it also is so loud and strong that for some people this can make them feel dizzy and unwell. This shows how Stanley Kubrick since the beginning of this film is playing with us and by using these low sounds knocks us off center with the images. As the car drives on it becomes unpleasant to listen to the music and automatically we start to create theories in out head that something bad is about too happen. The driving far away continues and this implies that there driving away from safety into somewhere extremely isolated. 

In terms of camera angles, all the shots are quite long and wide. Kubrick uses different camera techniques to make the audience feel eerie and odd. For example straight at the beginning the shot starts on a 180 camera angle then moves left to right and straight into a bird eye view. This signifies how he is trying to make us physically feel the height. This also suggests how we know something bad is going to happen - playing with your mentality. Tilting the car up off balance taking them up high and being scared the car is going to fall of the cliff all of this is to make you feel scared of your fears. As we go on，different noises come in and the sound starts to ramble. The jarring can make you feel uncomfortable and the screaming and wailing type noises also make you feel unsettled. Its all set against beautiful scenery to contrastaste the fact that if you have a thing with heights this road makes you feel very uncomfortable as it is a really high drop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEq-4fua3lM

To contrasts, Seven has the same aspects to this however it is a lot different in different ways. The beat in the diegetic music is steady and low and this creates an element of drama as its repetitive monotonous like a certain plodding to the soundtrack. It is also very intense in a low key kind of way to make the scene feel mysterious. In the imagery, everything was jumping around and it was in a closeup way to make you feel more interested and make you want to keep watching. We don’t know anything about this character however in a way we are introduced to them as the scenes go on. This is too get you interested in something however you don't know who it is. The different hints such as cutting out god from a newspaper create a sense of interest to make you keep watching. We can tell immediately that the character is a compulsive note taker and his an intelectual and quite artistic flare. This also creates as dark sense combined with the red flashing scenes and the background noises. The titled have many movements and lots of flashing scratchy effects signifying no smoothness or continuity to it. Overall it leaves you with an intriguing and dark feeling wanting you to keep open watching the movie. 

In addition these two films have a few similarities as for example in both films we are introduced to a character in a certain way. For example in The shining we know that there is someone in the car and we get the feeling that the camera movement is stalking them therefore we get a main idea that the person in the car is someone important that we will truly get to know later in the film. Similarly, in seven we are also introduced to the hands of a character which already gives us the main idea that this film is going to be dark and sketchy and gives us the feeling to want to keep watching and finding out who these people are. this happens in both cases where we are left with an intrigue to find out who these two characters are. However, there are also many differences in both these films, in the case of the Shining all the shots are long and they give the sense of continuity and that all the camera shots are linked together. We also get many long shots and bird eye view shots from far away giving us an overall perspective of the whole overview and all the landscape in the scene. In Seven all the shots are very snappy and fast this is too create intrigue and make the viewer keep on watching the movie. All the shots are very up close and show very detailed information that will link to clues later on in the film. there are many short up close shots and this creases the sense of un settlement and danger. The soundtrack in both films are very similar as they both have mysterious non diegetic music and both include a series of sound effects that are very disturbing and make you feel unwell and as if something is wrong. 

In conclusion, we can see that in both films there a series of similarities and differences that creates the same effect to the audience. However they are both expressed in different ways to create the same feeling to the audience. Both films use the same perspective of introducing characters and making the viewers intrigued and creating a mysterious feeling. However they have many differences such as the camera shots and the continuity of the shots and the overall perspective of the camera angles.