Common codes and conventions of film openings

From the opening of a film, audiences of any genre want to see the narrative enigma. There should be something in the film opening, which makes the audience want to carry on watching. However it varies from film to film on how this is done; Scream (1996) left 12 minutes of the beginning of the film before the narrative was assured.

Different genres use different codes and conventions for their film. In horror films its common for their to be blue tint lighting used; it is also common for the first girl to be seen on screen to be blonde who is more than likely going to die first. Generally speaking horror films try to target a middle class audience. In contrast to this social realism films tend to target a larger number of the working class audiences. In the opening of a social realism film we expect to see working class accents and locations, which is shown in Trainspotting (Danny Boyle), in that particular film the narrative enigma is used by people injecting heroine while a baby is in the room to keep the audience watching. It also begins very fast paced with fast music and a voice over of a working class accent while the main characters are quickly running. This all adds to the pace of the film and is an effective quick start to the film.

Romcoms have a different style to their opening scenes. Usually it is started off with a voice over of one of the main characters, this is done on Bridget Jones and Love actually.Romcoms openings tend to signify a feel good movie; in Love Actually this is done by clips of people meeting at Heathrow airport who they seem to not have seen for a while. There is also non-dijetic music straight away, which is slow and romantic signifying the genre of the film. Romcoms also usually produce a soundtrack from the film of the music this was also done for the two films Ive mentioned. Their target audience tends to be middle and upper lower class, there appears to be less obvious narrative enigma in this genre, as the opening of the films tends to set up the narrative for the rest of the film.