'What Lies Beneath' Opening Sequence Analysis.

TITLES:

• 20th Century Fox: shows that they have a large budget and can afford to have famous actors/actresses (such as Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer) in their films.
• The title first appears underwater and fades back into it. This shows that water will be of some importance later on in the film.

• The titles appear in a white colour, tinted with blue. This, along with the mist around it, adds to the cold and ghostly feel to the opening.

MISE EN SCENE:

• Lighting: it is quite cold, reflecting the overall tone of the opening sequence.
• Straight after the titles just for a few seconds you see, what you presume to be, the face of a dead woman. It then quickly changes to a close up of the main character's face. This shows that there may be a connection between the two.



• The woman in the bath is the main focus of the first scene. This shows that the woman is the main character and that the bathroom, especially the bath, has some significance.
  
• She also has quite a large house, this may mean she is waelthy, but it also makes her seem more alone.
• Next, she opens the curtains which reveals to us that there is a large lake by her house. Once again, this makes water seem very significant.

COLOURS:

The main colours in the opening sequence are black, when the titles are playing, and white, the colour of the titles, the bathroom and the woman's clothes. Showing that there is a contrast between dark and light and that could mean that something 'dark' and horrible will happen but after that there will be 'light' and contentedness will resume or it could be that maybe someone who seems good (the light/white) is not what they seem (darkness/black).

SOUNDS:

• During he titles, there is 'haunting' music played. It is predominantly music from a high pitched piano and violin, both of which have 'creepy' connotations.
• Then there are the diagetic sounds of the woman gasping for air. This reveals that something isn't right, that she is panicking and/or that she is scared.
• Silence: throughout the scene, there are no other noises in the background. This draws the audience's attention to the noises the character makes (gasping, the hairdryer etc), putting importance onto them and making it seem like she is alone.

CAMERA MOVEMENTS:
The main camera movements are slow and flowing, keeping direct focus on the woman. This shows how she is important in the film, and the slow movements make it seem calm, but also more 'spooky' and 'eerie'.


WHAT CAPTURES THE AUDIENCE'S INTEREST?

• The opening sequence leaves us with lots of questions which intrigues and makes us want to carry on watching to find out the answers. Here are some that I came up with:
• What's the significance of the face under the water?
• Why is she under water?
• Whose face is it?
• Is she dead?
• What is the link between the face and the main character?
• What is the significance of water?

But mainly, the big question is;

What is going to happen next?

NARRATIVE:

There is not much given away in this opening sequence. All we know is that water (more specifically the bath or lake) is important and so is the female character introduced to us. There is also the 'dead' face that is shown underwater to us for milliseconds after the title. To me, this adds up to the possibility that the woman may be murdered or drowned and her body will be left, or discovered, in the lake. That, or the main character discovers the body herself.

Also, the way that, when you see the 'dead' woman's face, her eyes open, this means to me that she may come back to haunt someone or come back from the dead to get revenge or justice.



(Click on this photograph to get to the YouTube clip I used to watch the opening sequence.)