Friday, 12 December 2014

Dialogue in an opening

Rather than using music or a monologue, some films are opened jumping straight into dialogue, 'Mean Girls' is an example of this.


The film opens with a low angle shot of Cady's parents looking and talking to her, her dad passes her her lunch and tells her she can "ask one of the big kids" where she can buy milk, and her mum passes her a note with her phone number on it. Her mum then asks if she is ready to which Cady replies with "I think so". From the dialogue we would assume Cady is starting her first day at school, and as a voiceover starts we learn that she is.

The voiceover lasts for around 30 seconds where Cady tells us about her experience in africa and why  she lived there and as it stops theres more dialogue as she nearly gets hit by a bus but turns to tell her parents that she is ok.

A good thing about dialogue here is that it allows you to see the relationship between characters, we can see that Cady and her parents have a close relationship and that they still see her as a baby but care for her a lot. Even though there is only a bit of dialogue in the opening two minutes, it is a very good introduction to the film as the entirety of it is about an innocent homeschooled girl joining a 'scary' high school and the dialogue between the parents and Cady at the start show this, as well as the patronising low angle as Cady's parents are looking down at her.

In this particular opening there is a very good mixture of techniques, there is dialogue to start with, then a voiceover with flashbacks and towards the end of it there is music too. However, a problem with an entire film opening consisting of 100% dialogue is that it doesn't set a mood, it only delivers information either through the conversation between characters or their relationship, that is part of why I think the opening and entire 'mean girls' film is so successful, the different techniques used and the layout of it makes it interesting to watch.

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