Analysing Opening Sequences - Twilight

The screen starts black and the voice-over begins before the picture fades in. Because there is no visual on screen initially, the viewer is only concentrating on what the voice-over is saying and is not distracted from what is happening in the scene to start with. Then when the scene starts there are a series of short take shots of a deer in a overgrown forest. This gives the impression that the forest has been deserted; there is no life there any more, except the deer and this makes it look out of place. At first there are some longer shots of the deer eating but they gradually become shorter and quicker when the deer starts to frantically run away from something or someone. The short take editing creates pace to the scene and indicates what is happening. At this point the viewer is unsure on why the deer is running until right at the end of this sequence there is a figure that comes into shot on the right hand side of the screen and grabs the deer, the viewer is then left to interpret this, as they like. Although later on in the film the audience then associates this person as a vampire, but at this time the audience is given no information on whom this is. This keeps the audience intrigued and makes them want to carry on watching the film to find out more to do with the characters involved. The scene cuts from the running deer to a close up of the main female character (Bella Swan) in a bright/warm environment, which is the opposite of the previous dark/cold scene. This forces the audience to make a comparison between the two different circumstances and this is a result of juxtaposition of contrasting scenes. This also makes the audience question what the relevance of the previous scene was. The voice over is ongoing throughout the whole of the first two minutes of the film. At this point we know that the voice over is the voice of Bella, the main character, and she is explaining what she is doing and tell the audience that she is moving house and her thoughts on this. During this we are introduced to two extra minor characters, her mother and her step-dad as she explains that she is moving away from them and moving in with her father. Bella tells the audience in the voice-over about Phoenix, where she currently lives. She says 'I’ll miss Phoenix, I’ll miss the heat' so that the viewer can contrast this with what the new town she is moving to is like. The scene cuts to a shot of an aeroplane taking off, which the sound is exaggerated to emphasise that she is obviously on this plane. This shot also symbolises her physically moving between these two places. Which result is in the next scene being a shot of her and her father in a police car, showing that her father is a police officer, presumably being picked up from the airport. Her voice over explains her new home town as being 'under a near constant cover of clouds and rain' then shows a shot of a sign saying 'welcome to Forks' this shows the audience that it is a huge change from her previous home in Phoenix. Although very little happens in the first two minutes of the film, you get an impression that her first impressions of the Forks is that it's rather depressing and she probably prefers her old home of Phoenix at this point. But the audience is given a chance to change their mind about this later on in the film.

Screen Shots

This is the first shot that we get within the first few seconds of the film. At this point Bella has a voicover, telling us a bit about herself and nature - this only becomes relevant later. Once we have seen this shot there is a use of ambient sound such a heavy breathing and bushes ruffling. The target audience get a sense that something is going to happen at this point. The deer starts to look around and we get a impression that it is a hunter, but then something starts chasing after the deer which makes the target audience think otherwise, but not until later do we realise that it was a vampire.






 There is a shot of the sky and the camera then slowly pans down to her face where her voiceover continues. This is an important screen shot as the target audience see by the close up of her facial expression that something is going happen that will change her life. She has a flower in her hand and we get a POV shot of this and a wide angle shot of her house behind her, which also tells us she has a very ordinary life at this stage as it is not a notable setting in any way. The flower might link her with romance. Then there's a use of dialogue between Bella and her mother at this stage before she leaves to move to her father’s house. Once she has spoken to her mother, the voiceover continues telling us a bit about her mother. Voiceover is really important in teen drama to make sure we know how the main character views the world and the people around them.










Titles and Credits

Before the film starts there is only one title slide, which is a production distribution company logo of summit entertainment. This logo gets smaller so that it fits on the screen and it feels as though the camera is backing away from it, even though we know that this image is computer generated. There is no real transition between this and the film starting the screen just fades to black and the voice over starts.

The logo is on a background. The picture itself is a mixture of different blues and there is a moving fog/mist going over it and this gives it a gloomy atmosphere, which matches the start of the film.