It may be difficult to believe, but the opening shot of any kind of film is often the most difficult to choose. I often wait until the project is complete before I even attempt it. If the opening shot is scripted, and shot correctly, then the editor has it pretty easy. But if it’s a documentary, trailer, music video or even a narrative film with multiple angles to choose from, it can be a tough decision.
The obvious opening shot is the establishing shot. This is usually a wide angle of a city, building, park, or other location. Think of the opening titles to any number of films that were just “okay”. A montage of city scenes set to fun music. Maybe there are some shots of the protagonist driving a car. It serves to orient the audience and give a sense of place. And it doesn’t always work.
Most of the time, it’s lazy and does nothing to serve the story the filmmaker is trying to tell. Sometimes though, it works wonderfully. Think of the opening title shots from Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. Even the most red-state, freedom fries-eating good ’ol boy wouldn’t mind teleporting to Paris after that city montage plays. My favorite “establishing shot” opening title sequence is from The Blues Brothers. No music. Just ugly industrial shots of Illinois with wild audio. It’s hilarious and sets a gritty tone to match the music and subject of the film.
Establishing shots also work quite well in ad-supported television. The audience usually needs a breath to get back into the show. It gives them a cue to stop fast-forwarding the DVR—or when I was growing up, it gave me a chance to yell at my siblings to shut jabber boxes, because the show is back on. But it doesn’t always work. And I’m plenty guilty of using it when I shouldn’t.
So when should an establishing shot be used, and when should it be avoided?
The godfather of film, D.W. Griffith developed parallel editing (intercutting action between two or more simultaneous but disparate scenes) because Charles Dickens did it in his novels. Griffith got his inspiration from literature, and then revolutionized how films could be made. If we use literature for inspiration as Griffith did, we can look at how some of the great short stories or novels begin. Do they start with a description of the setting? Some do, but I believe they are the exception. Let’s look at a few:
“Call me Ishmael.” – Moby Dick
We have a warm meeting with the protagonist. He invites us into a friendship. He has taken us into his trust. It’s almost as if we are in a local pub, and he’s relating a story he’s told a thousand times before. We connect emotionally. But there is no sense of place in that first line.
“True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am! but why will you say that I am mad? – The Tell-Tale Heart
We are immediately inside the mind of a clearly disturbed individual. Perhaps we relate to his paranoia. After all, who hasn’t been “very, very dreadfully nervous” at some point? Certainly no one who’s ever felt a sneeze coming on right after taking a bite of cereal. There is an emotional connection, but no clue as to the setting so far.
“You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter.” – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Here is a distant and suspicious narrator, speaking in a difficult and uneducated vernacular. Again, no sense of place, but we know where we stand with the hero of the story. As a reader, we want to be taken into Huck’s confidence, if only to understand what he’s saying. Most likely, the reader has read Tom Sawyer. Right away, we know that this is something different altogether.
And as strange as it sounds, we want Huck to like us, so we want to look at the world through his eyes.
If I’ve learned something about openings from literature, it’s that the first line should set an emotional tone or connection to the character. In other words, a reason to keep reading.
Now let’s look at some opening shots from film:
In Citizen Kane, we are put at a great distance from the main character with the very first shot. From a “No Trespassing” sign, to shots of a giant, lonely mansion. The “No Trespassing” sign piques the viewer’s curiosity—what’s on the other side? It plays with the human nature of the audience to bring an immediate interest to a character we haven’t yet met. We want to know who lives here. That is the exact question that Orson Welles intended the audience to ask, and he spends the rest of the film almost answering it. Citizen Kane is an example of a film that could only work with an establishing shot at the opening. Distance from the central character is the entire point.
The Godfather has one of the most effective opening scenes I can think of. It shows the interior world of a powerful mob boss, then opens up into a giant celebratory wedding feast. It’s a duality that the Al Pacino character, Michael Corleone, wrestles with for most of the film. But the first shot is a close up of an ancillary character. We see a good man in a desperate situation. An immigrant father who cannot get justice for his daughter through the police. We identify with him and want to see his savior. It’s only then that we see Marlon Brando’s character. The audience is endeared to him. We see the nuance through his darkness. We see him as the pleading father sees him. We want him to say that he’ll bring justice for this man’s daughter. If the opening shot had been anything else—a wide shot of the wedding, a wide shot of the room, or even a close up of Vito Corleone—the effect would taint the rest of the film. He would be just a mafia don who loves his family. But because of the opening shot, we see him as an answer to a problem—even if the answer is morally problematic.
The common thread with these two opening shots is identical to the opening lines of our examples from literature—they establish an emotional tone and connection with the audience. And that is the only reason, in my opinion, establishing shots should be used, (outside of the special case of television). Though it will usually do the job as an introduction to a film (and I’ve done it more times than I’d care to admit), it doesn’t always serve the emotional needs. It should be well-thought out. The best directors and producers may change their minds about opening shots several times before settling on the one that works. Whether it’s something as simple as a trailer or as complicated as a documentary, the first shot must connect with the audience. So if you’re an editor or filmmaker, it’s worth taking your time with that opening shot, even if it means saving it until the end.
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