Conventions of film openings

To start off our film project in media, we began looking at the conventions used in film openings as a way of introducing the films and their characters. We watched the opening of Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, which is a black and white film because it was made in 1960. The credits used in this film (as well as others we watched) sets the mood because the transitions used to represent the credits reflect the film's mood. For Psycho, the credit names were slashed and fragmented to echo the creepiness of the film's title.

Similarly, the beginning of Goodfellas also represented the credits to highlight the mood of the film. For these particular credits, sound effects of moving cars accompanied the credits, which flew on and off the screen in a way that mirrored the way cars move.

Trainspotting is another film which we watched that followed certain conventions. The film introduced characters by pausing the action and adding a credit/title of the character's name. This is common in action films. The genre of the film was represented by music (similar to the sound effects in Goodfellas); the non-diegetic sound was upbeat and fast-paced, and this was represented by the running of the character in the beginning.

Other notable features of these films - 

• dates to highlight the chronological order of the films (as seen in Psycho and Goodfellas)
• narrative voiceovers (as seen in Trainspotting and Goodfellas)
• pan camera shot of the setting (as seen in Psycho, introduces city of Arizona)