The shining – Opening Crdits

Institutional contextThe names and the text start to appear at 1.06 into the film credits. The first text is located in the middle of the screen and it has the animation of it floating up from the bottom. It says the film director „A Stanley Kubrick Film” and it has a bold simple font. The writing is quite big and it stands out as it has the bright blue colour. Furthermore the writing doesn’t stop as at all durning it’s being on the screen as it slowly moves up all the time until it disapears. Every single text in the credits appears and disspears this way, even the title of the film. The only text that actually differs from everything is the sub title for example „Featuring” as it’s smaller than the rest but still same font size and colour. This is used to make sure that the name stands out more than the role they did.

NarrativeIn the two minutes durning the credit scene we don’t get to learn anything about the character as we only get to see location and a car in motion which doesn’t stop. However this might suggest that it’s someone or a family going on holiday to mountains. Everything is set chronological with time gaps. We don’t actually see the car moving into location but we know it moved as it was travilling up. We start at the bottom of the mountain and we end up at the top while the opening credits play. We get to see 8 location but they are all conected as we get to see him travel accross them, except one which is a lonely island in a middle of the river, or a see which suggest that in the car there might be only one person, or the island might play an important role in the movie.

RepresentationsAs we can see by the start of the movie, there is only one island which is lonely as it’s separated from the other land by a sea. There is also one car which we get to follow throughout most of the credits. This suggest that both of them will play an important part in the movie. Also suggest that’s it’s a lonely person in the car as it isn’t a big family car either. However in contrast we get the location which reminds us of family holiday in mountains. This creates the effect of conffusion and makes the watchers wanting to carry on watching.

GenreDuring the opening credits for the movie we can’t really tell that it’s an horror genre movie without the sound. Everything seems normal and all we focus on is locations which a sterotypically where families would go for a trip and a yellow car which isn’t a family car. However the sound effects and music creates tenstion for the user as the music is created from most likely a piano using one note. We assiosinate piano music with horros, furthermore we also get those creepy sound effect once in a while which we would usually think belong to a horror movie. Also in contrast of the lighting, most of the horror movies are dark but this one is sunny and light which completly doesn’t reflect the theme of the movie.

Use of camera -1 and 2During the recording of the credits for the shinning there was only two camera distances used in the proccess; which are the extreme long shot and long shot. As we have no characters to focus on we have to focus on the locations therefore the dirrector uses the extreme long shot in order to get as much of the location on the screen as possible. However we get few camera angles such as the neutral view, birds eye view and, high angle from behind. Even though we get three camera angles in the credits, we can also only see three camera movments, which are: a tracking shot, zoom in and zoom out. Overall the most used camera distance is the extreme long shot, the most used camera angle is a high angle from behind and the most used camera movement is a tracking shot. In the film opening there is no steady shots, this is because the director doesn’t have anything to focus on except location, therefore he uses the movements of the camera to show more locations instead of focusing on one part of the location.

Use of camera - 3All of the shots in the shining opening credits are open frames, once more as the writer doesn’t have any characters to show, he won’t just show an empty house therefore he is showing the natural locations such as the mountains and forest. These are open locations therefore the director wants to show that it’s a single human as it’s in the open frame with the natural locations. Furthermore the director wants to confuse the audience by making the beggining of the film looking nice and happy, when in reality something is about to happen as it’s a horror movie. Also all the frames are in an open frame to show that the person in a car is free and away from everything.

Use of camera -4

SoundIn this opening of a film there is only non-diegetic sound as we can only here creepy sound effects and background music. As there is no characters in the movie we don’t get to here any dialogues. The music keeps stopping and restarting in the movie. The music is loud as that’s the key sound we can here. The sound doesn’t fit in with the visuals as we can see sunny day and a trip to mountains while there is scary sound effects and non-diegetic loud creepy music playing in the background. As there are only two sounds in the opening credits when they are put together they sound really creepy to create the effect of the horror genre as the visual represent complety diffferent genre. The music doesn’t get faded in it just appears loud at the start of the movie credits, but it gets faded out at the end of the credits with the visuals.

Editing - 1As this is a really old movie there is hardly any editing done durning this creation. There’s no breaking of the 180 degree rule, there’s no match on action or shot reverse shot as there is also no characters introduced to us. However we continue seeing the same yellow car throughout the opening credits which suggests that the director wants us to get to know the car. Furthermore the lighting is always the same in the movie credits, even when the car reachers the moutains. It’s light instead of being dark which we assosinate a horror movie with.

Editing – 2 and 3The sequence only uses straight cuts to keep the audience intrested in the locations instead of wasting time using fade in and fade out transitions. The only transistion which we can see is at the end of the credits when it fades out. This is used to inform the audience that the movie credits have stopped and that the main part of the movie will beging. The fade lasts few seconds so the users can realise that it’s the end of the film credits.

During the 2:47 minutes we only get to see 10 location. The director only uses this locations as they are all joined together except the first one, the lonely island. The director of the movie wanted us to pay attention and instead of bombarding the audience with a lot of location he only wanted to show the key wants which the audience should remember. The shots are really low starting from 10 to – 30 seconds .

Mise-en-sceneAs we don’t get to meet any characters the costumes and other imporant parts of mise-en-scene don’t exist here. There also isn’t a set setting as we get introduced to the trip of the car from the forrest up to the mountaing. During that we get to witness 10 differnt locations which all have something in comparssion, the yellow car.

Titles & CreditsThe credits start to appear 1.06 minutes into the movie. Every single word has the same font and the colour of it. The size differ between if it’s saying what job the person has or the name of the person; font is bigger for the name. Furthermore all of them appear in the same way by sliding up from the bottom without stopping, they start from the bottom and dissipear by sliding out at the top, all of the writing is also in the center of the frame all the time. However the title movie also appears between the actors names and the crew. It appears in the exactly same way and font as they others.

CrewThe job titles which appear are:

The actors names ( Who it’s featuring )Executive ProducerProduced in assosiation with the producer circle companyScreenplay byProduced and Directed By