Two Examples of Films Opening Sequences: L.A. Confidential.

L.A. Confidential
1997
Directed By: Curtis Hanson

Like Bridget Jones, we're introduced first hearing music; in this instance, old style jazz music (relevant to noir) as we fade into a postcard from California. The voice over starts and talks about L.A. in an almost holiday representative manner. They really want you to know where this is set and this makes the location seem extremely important. A serif-style, quite grand typeface appears in yellow, introducing the institutions and companies that contributed towards the film.

We then see a a huge montage of shots. Mise-en-scene wise, it's notable that this is not set in the time it was released; outfits and general style is very 70's, the colours generally are faded and dull, and the shots are blurred. Still seemingly trying to "sell" L.A. to the audience, the voice-over continues as a montage of similarly styles shots appear.

Introduced to a split screen of four different shots, "L.A. Confidential" logo is places in the middle, as all shots show factory work. Cutting to a single screen, the movie title still there, we see a birds eye view of L.A. scenery as the jazz music continues.

Another set of montages, still in a very old-fashioned style continues. We see pool scenes, a family at a dinner table, suburban streets as the non-diegetic voice-over corresponds to the shown shots. Religious imagery is shown as the family are at the table; notably a white family of two males, two females which contributes the idea of 'the American dream'.

Furthering that idea, the montage continues, but shows very glamourous shots of camera-flashes, actresses, red carpet events etc. more imagery is shown, but reffering to police and drug crime. We're shown shots of TVs with cop shows on them as the voiceover gives us information about "the best police-force in the world".

We're introduced to characters in this scene as we enter a very old-school diner and the voice-over exclaims; "It's paradise on earth! haha... that's what they tell ya' anyway. Because they're selling an image; for movies, radio, tv... But. There's trouble in paradise... and his name is Myer Harris Cone." Here, we pan the diner to a long shot of a very well, yuppie-ish dressed man dancing with a woman. His costume shows his wealth and status, social class etc. This makes the audience wonder why is he is dangerous and question what he does, what he's done, why is he so infamous? We enter yet another similar montage, but this time focusing on organised crime. We see close ups of drugs, crime scenes, and most importantly, we zoom in on newspaper headlines.

We now see a reflection of a huge neon-lit building in a reflection of a building window at night. The camera pans around to introduce a character sat at a desk with a typewriter, which we hear far before we see him. The room is darkly lit and he appears to be wearing a shirt, glasses and a trilby hat (also very noir). We notice he's saying the voice over and typing what the voice-over has been all this time so the sound switches to diegetic, but creates more question; who is he? Shot from eye-level, the mid-shot pans around him but then cuts to a pile of magazines, titled "Hush-Hush" which gives the audience the impression he's a journalist of some sort. The shot fades to black and both the music and voice-over end as the same titles that appeared at the beginning titles re-appear.