Film Opening Analysis - A good day to Die Hard

Film Opening Analysis:
A good day to Die Hard







When getting inspiration for my film opening, one of the films I looked at was Die Hard. I watched the opening sequence (first two minutes up till the titles) and took screenshots of important frames.

The first screenshot shows the first titles over a black screen, these display the production companies behind the film but do not play an important role in the story in the film or tell us about the characters.

 The second screenshot is of the first bit of footage we see, in this shot we see a plane landing on runway and another title appears on top. The title names the director of the film and the scene behind it helps set the feel of the film and introduce what turns out to be an important part of the first scene, the plane.

The third screenshot introduces the main character and the other character in the scene, it cuts from an outside view of the plane landing to this shot to help the audience realise that the characters shown are in the plane we saw in the first shot. The main purpose of this shot is to introduce Bruce Willis' character and show his fear of flying as he talks to the person next to him.

The final screenshot end the opening two minutes and end with the title of the movie, in this case, "Die Hard". This is used to show that the opening had finished and now the main part of the film had begun.

This opening follows generic conventions to some extent but the narrative of the story is not typical of that of an action movie. Normally movies from the action or thriller genre start with an action sequence or contain a fight scene, this isn't seen in the opening for Die Hard as it is meant to be more tame and family friendly that movies like The Dark Knight and Shutter Island.