Week One - Film Opening Examples

Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)

In Get Out, a couple reaches the "meet the parents" milestone of dating. The girlfriend (Rose) invites her boyfriend (Chris) to stay at her parents' house upstate for the weekend. At first it seems like her parents' nervous attempts to accommodate him are due to the adjusting of their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses Chris discovers a series of truths he never would've imagined. Jordan Peele uses close ups to focus more intensely on the emotions of the characters and relies heavily on mise-en-scene and sound, as most thriller films do. He uses a color palette specific to the theme of the movie which he shows through costume design and lighting; red is used to represent danger and bloodshed, and blue to represent the more psychological aspects of the film. 

This film opening shows a man walking through a suburb at night talking to his significant other on the phone about directions to her house. Once he hangs up, a car drives by and Peele shows in the background, unbeknownst to the character, that they've turned around and are following him. As the car stops beside him, eerie music is playing loudly from the inside. They continue following him and he decides quickly to turn around the other way he came and crosses the street. As he does he realizes the door to the car is open; the music gets louder as he turns around, emphasizing his fear as the stranger comes up behind him and chokes him until he passes out. The stranger drags him to their car and puts him in their trunk, and when the assailant closes the car door the music stops. 

The credit scene alludes more to the main characters, showing a long POV shot of trees passing by from a car window, representing the long, dreary car ride the couple is going to take upstate. The rest of the opening establishes background information that's revealed later on in the movie, alluding to a major conflict.

A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018)

A Quiet Place takes place in a world where mysterious creatures who hunt by detecting sound will kill anything that makes the slightest of noise. A family must live in complete silence to survive, protecting each other while also trying to find a way to fight back. The movie has minimal dialogue and uses only diegetic sound as the protagonists use sign language throughout the film. This produces thrill and terror when there are louder sounds, as they stand out. Krasinski uses costume design and the color red to emphasize feelings of danger and depth in the audience, utilizing the nature around them and the color green to contrast with feelings of tranquility and hope. 

The opening to A Quiet Place begins with a black screen displaying "Day 89" with low, eerie music, hinting to the conflict of the film. This cuts to an abandoned town and the inside of a store where kids are running through. The characters are introduced, showing a teen girl wearing a hearing aid and her two younger brothers followed by their mother and father. It's established that they communicate in sign language and pay special attention to making sure they make no sound whatsoever. A lot of background information is established, showing they've made their own way of life in order to survive, and that the youngest child is too young to understand they need to be silent. 

The use of sound elements by Krasinksi is excellent, the music adding depth/dread or whimsy where dialogue could be; for example the youngest took a toy rocket with batteries in it, and on their way home from the store, had turned it on and made noise. Intense music picks up as the father puts his things down and runs towards him, then stops as a creature runs towards the boy and kills him, taking him offscreen. The title is shown for a short period of time coupled with low music, made after sand is thrown on screen to reinforce their way of safe travel.

Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

Adelaide Wilson, accompanied by her husband, son and daughter, return to the beach house front where she grew up as a child. Haunted by a traumatic experience from her past, she becomes increasingly anxious that something terrible is about to happen and realizes her worst fears have come true when four masked strangers come to her house at night. When the masks come off, the Wilsons are horrified to realize each stranger takes the appearance of one of them, forcing them into a fight for survival. Peele uses humor in Us to build tension and anticipation, which is incredibly effective. His use of color and mise-en-scene, similar to Get Out is symbolic of the theme of the movie; he uses red in his costume design to represent death and danger and uses lighting to create sinister undertones between characters. His use of sound works to invoke terror in the audience as well, using music and silence to build suspense when necessary. 

The opening to Us is long. It begins with a small excerpt, followed by a TV advertising an organization and a Santa Cruz boardwalk, revealing the setting and timeframe of the movie. This is reinforced when it cuts to the next scene and introduces the main character as a young girl at a carnival there with her parents; it's nighttime, making the lighting all that more dramatic as the sky is pitch black. She walks off when her parents aren't watching her and ends up in a fun house, where she runs into another little girl that looks exactly like her, introducing the conflict of the movie early on. 

During the credit scene that follows right after, the camera zooms out on an extreme close up of a bunny, revealing a room full wall to wall of rabbits in cages, and tables with chairs filling the room; the choice of music is dramatic and operatic. Both the sound elements and film content are meant to give an eerie feeling to the audience. The red font of the title and credits are important to reinforce the theme of the movie being a psychological thriller as well.