Conventions of Opening Sequences; The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Establishing Shot: Used to set the scene and inform the audience where the film is taking place. Some films may skip this in order to build further enigma codes- such as: where are the characters and why are they here? For example: In the opening sequence for ‘The Girl with the dragon tattoo’, there is no clear wide establishing shot which makes the audience question what exactly is being shown flowing across in the opening titles.

Opening Credits: Show the cast and production team for the films. Can we a way of building suspense to get to the main film sequence and can include genre signifiers. In ‘The Girl with the dragon tattoo’, the actors names come up amongst the images.

Soundtrack: The use of tone, volume and tempo helps to set the mood and signify the genre of film to the audience. For example a pulsating heart-beat like noise may connote that the film is going to be from the thriller or horror genre. In ‘The Girl with the dragon tattoo’, the music begins much quieter and as it continues builds in volume and pace. This intrigues the audience to the very end of the opening in order for them to continue watching the rest of the film.

Production Logo & Film Title: The title normally is included in the opening sequence in order to tell the audience what the film is about and may imply what they are going to see. The title also gives the audience an insight into the theme of the film. This is the first thing the audience see’s in the opening for ‘The Girl with the dragon tattoo’. It states “Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Present”. Also, the use of the film title allows the audience to consider any deeper meanings that the text may have.

Theme/ Topic Introduced: Introducing the theme at the start of a film helps the audience to distinguish what the genre is through the use of typical generic conventions. In ‘The Girl with the dragon tattoo’, the topic isn’t clearly introduced. This makes the audience question what they think the film may be about based on the title and minimal images shown in the opening.

Introduction of Characters: Normally, the main characters are shown in the opening sequence to a film. This signifies their importance in the plot and helps the audience to see the main person to watch out for. However, some films choose not to show main characters in the opening scene in order to challenge the typical conventions of films from that genre and make the film stand out in comparison to others. This is reflected in ‘The Girl with the dragon tattoo’ as we only see digitally edited people in the opening sequence- which may in some way be linked to the plot. Also, this creates further narrative enigma for the audience to question.

Enigma: Enigma is the unanswered questions the audience have at the start of a film and are eventually resolved at the end. Most of the time the questions involve:

-Who are they?

-Where are they?

-What are they doing?

Questions like these are used to grab the audience’s attention at the start of a film to convince them to continue watching. Also, it is a clever way to interact with the audience as it allows them to think of possible resolutions and alternatives which builds further tension.