Opening sequence analysis Brick (Johnson, 2005, USA)

The film Brick displays how to create a good opening sequence despite only having a low budget of the movie. the use of cinematography, editing, sound and miss en scene.

as all films do, we see the production ident (of focus features) appear before the start of the film, this is followed by a fade to black when the soundtrack starts to play and we hear the musical instrument of the xylerphone playing lots of short notes, this begins to create a quite eerie atmosphere as the first shot of the film fades in. The use of a handheld tracking shot to show a persons feet who is crouched which is then superimposed into the shot of the extreme close up of the persons face which is obscured by the character hand, a focus pull is also used to prolong that time the we are waiting to see his face. these use of shots and edits create and haze of ambiguity around the character and what they may be doing. this makes the audience mistrust the person as we cannot see much of them and we are forces to make assumptions about them.

shots/edits that create ambiguity

Master shot of the scene

Then this master shot/ long is used and gives use more information of what is happening within the scene, as we see a woman lying (presumably dead) on the floor and this boy staring intently looking at her. This shot leads the audience to ask questions like "did he kill her?" and "why does he seem so calm next to a dead body?" this pushes the audience to place the blame upon this character as he is the only person there and must have killed her or know something about how she died. This also introduces the audience to the setting at adds the their knowledge of what is happening, as the they appear to be in a sewer we are pushed to make the assumption the something dirty, bad, unclear happened here as these that the things that are connotations of this kind of setting.

The scene then flows into ordinary cuts between close ups of the dead girl and of the boy looking intently at her almost as it it is a shot reverse shot that implies that this is quite normal for him or that he has some sort of fixation with her, as the camera tracks forward in the shots of both the girl and him it adds to us believing that this is true.

with the final shot is this scene we see the girls arm with bracelets on and the edit of a graphic match to show the same girls hand sliding a note into a locker, this is accompanied by a sound bridge changing the sound of the xylophone into that of a school bell (this creates empathy for the girl as we realise that she is only young and is still in school) this uses of sound and shots almost acts as an ellipsis into the past. The title of the movie is then shown ending the opening of the film.