Introduction
Hello and welcome back! Last blog we researched color theory, this time we’ll get to use that research along with many other things we’ve learned through research on films because I’ll be doing a comparative analysis of the first two minutes of two different sport dramas to compare them and get ideas for my film opening.
I am limited to only movies on Netflix because of my subscriptions but I found two great movies to watch and compare. I am going to watch the opening of Skater Girl and The Swimmers.
Netflix Over View Of Movies
After reading the online and Netflix descriptions of the movies I found that Skater Girl is an inspiring drama about a rural Indian girl who grows a passion for skateboarding, she wants to compete but faces opposition from family so she through the movie she overcomes social and gender restrictions.
The Swimmers on the other is a biographical drama; biographical is a film dramatizes the like story of a real person. The film follows two swimmer sisters who flee war to compete and swim in the 2016 Olympics.
Now that we’ve looked at what the movie will be about lets get started.
Skater Girl
The movie begins with 9 seconds of the Netflix signs with the black background, then the background goes completely dark before displaying the production companies. The first real clip is at 16 seconds where the scenes fades in to a short and slow pan of the ground where a wooden board is being attached to a purple rope with nostalgic or melancholy music playing in the background. Then as the board with roe hits the ground the title of the film appears in purple letters The background is the pale dry looking dirt ground with a yellowish tone, going with the music and the purple in the scene represents transformation and creativity.
The next scene starts with a girl running, the camera is following her from behind and pans up from her sandals slapping the ground to all or her in frame and a little boy in frame as well who she seems to be dragging on wooden board with the purple rope. They both have brown hair and skin and the girl is wearing a flowy cultural dress. The boy is laughing as the sweet music continues to play and the background is this path in a vibrantly green forest.
Then the camera angle switched to next to the Boy she is pulling. He is holding onto the rope and yelling go faster while wearing a red book bag, flip flops, a blue shirt, and shorts that look like a uniform. The camera then goes back up to the girls face who looks very happy and the music turns more upbeat.
The next about ten seconds shows more clips of the happy girl pulling the happy boy on the board through their rural town, once they come to a stop the girl says bye to the little boy and he goes to school. After leaving the boy who appears to be her brother she looks much sadder and serious. And the whole two minutes the director credits fade in on the side of the screen.
That is the end of the two minutes, from this short part of the movie we can tell that she likely loves that boy and he is probably family, the wooden board is likely foreshadowing her pasión with skateboarding as well and I wonder how the music and mood will change when she is without the boy and what come next for her.
The Swimmer
This film also begins with the Netflix sign and a black background and once that fades out the production company’s logo appears with the name of the company. Next a serious sounding music starts to play as the first scene fades in, this music raises a feeling of caution. The scene shows the blue sky with clouds as the year 2011 appears with the location “A Suburb of Damascus, Syria”.
The camera begins to pan down as the sound of seagulls is heard, followed by a high pitch scream and older looking buildings appears among trees. There is also a dry mountain in the background as well, the camera continues to pan until a public pool is shown, the colors of the pool, people, towels, and floaties is much more vibrant then the original scene and then the music changes to fun and upbeat music, completely changing the mood of this opening scene.
Next we see and hear kids laughing as they jump into the pool with the upbeat music, they are wearing colorful floaties and swim suits, then we see people floating in colorful floats, then more splashing and kids playing while adults also enjoy the pool, each of these clips are only a couple seconds long but they flow together.
Director names also pop up on the sides of the screen in a bright shade of orange. Mothers play with their children in the pool, teens lay ball and punch each other into the pool, and little kids learn to swim. Then one of the teenage boys throw a toy into the pool that splashes and then sinks as the camera follows, the music also changes and becomes more muffled as the camera goes under water.
The music then stops as the boys jump in after the toy so this must be some sort of game maybe to see who can grab the toy first, one of the boys grabs it and then the music pans to the other side of the pool, the music becomes more dramatic and playfully mysterious during the pan.
We hear muffled splashes and we then see a girl swim along the bottom of the pool. Then the title appears in orange and the camera focuses on two other girls in the background under water. The two girls are lying in the water just floating facing down together and one of them is holding a pink wrist watch that shows a minute and ten seconds.
This is the end of the first two minutes of The Swimmers, the two girls are most likely the main characters and their future as swimmers is foreshadowed by them practicing holding their breath, the scene after this will likely show more of their practicing, this sets their swimming roots and leaves questions for the rest of the film.
Conclusion
The opening sequences of the films both have similar things like starting with the darkness and music fading in with the first scene, also the director names fading in to the sides of the scenes and the title showing as well but the first film showed the title much earlier then the second film.
The second film also feels different because of the mood changes and setting change. But both films follow female protagonist on their journey to surpass challenges for the passion of their sport which is a bit different from my film since my protagonist starts to lose some of her passion due to being overcome by the pressure of her sport, nonetheless this was still very helpful and educational since I would to include fade ins in my opening and I would like it to start with a nostalgic tone as well where my protagonist enjoys her sport before her feelings change.
Thank you reading and below I have some useful sites you can check out.
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