Film Openings and Audiences

The opening is one of the most important parts of a film, this is because its what is used to bring the audience into the story/universe of the film. This is when the audience will decide whether they will carry on watching the film or wont carry on watching. It can be a crucial part in the film because if the opening is not good enough and doesn't draw the audience in, then they will get very bored very easily and will decide to not watch the rest of the film which can be bad because you may have a very good film made but may have a bad opening which makes the audience miss out on how good the film actually is.

A good film example of this is I Am Legend, this is because it shows he significant he is in comparison to the whole area around him that has deteriorated and died out. This is shown through the scene where he is driving through the city, it shows him in a bright red car which has connotation of him being a threat towards the monsters that lurk in the city but also has significance when looking around the city and looking at the car he is driving. It shows that he is the only sane and fully human person in the whole city/world. When you look at how destroyed the buildings are and how dull all the other objects are compared to how bright his car is, it shows him as a powerful character and shows he is something significant to the story and the events that have taken place. The journey he takes through the city is very significant in this opening because it interests the audience because it makes the audience want to know where is going and with the addition of the car's connotations, the audience may think he is important and the journey he is taking in this scene may be a significant scene in the movie. So to have something this important in an opening is very good because it sparks the audiences interests heavily because its very secretive because there is barely any talking and there is no music whatsoever which means that audience have more attention to pay on mise and whats being shown. To have such a destroyed city in the beginning is good because it makes the viewer want to carry on watching because they want to know how it got to being such a disaster and why this character is the only one there and how he got there in the first place. It would be much better to put in the beginning rather than showing the events that took place in order for the city and character to be this way because the audience would already know how its happened so where would the story go from there?

The audience theory this would most likely be linked to would be the uses and gratifications model. This is because some of the things people would seek from this film would be:

• Entertainment (Shown through the action and high paced action sequences) 
• To relate to the characters or situations (The idea of isolation and being alone is heavily shown in the film, which could be something that the audience relates to) 
• To be informed or educated (It gives them an idea of what the world would be like if there was some sort of apocalypse and it shows us how one person would deal with being placed in a world like this) 
• To escape from the daily troubles or woes (It places them in a new world and something completely different to their daily life which could ease their troubles and make them easier to deal with if once and a while, they're taken away from it)