Film Opening Conventions

Here is the opening scene for I Am Legend, i very much like this opening scene as it is very different to other film openings. In the beginning there is a conversation between the two women talking about curing cancer, although this may seem unusual for the audience but at the same time its makes the audience excited to find out what this is about (there is no cure for cancer yet which makes it more interesting), studio identity is used (Warner Bros) but in a very different way compared to how they normally would do it with the blue background and yellow logo, this time they isolate it in the streets, this matches the atmosphere that is set and mood, we can clearly see throughout the opening scene that everything is isolated and scattered everywhere, so just like the studio ident and the actors names is scattered anywhere: in the middle of the road, on shops and on traffic lights.The location and setting is familiar: its the city of New York but in an abandoned and isolated condition. just before the title sequence comes up there is a voice over by the main character which is a very familiar convention in film openings, you can hear his soft, innocent yet scared voice asking for help, this also creates the atmosphere and the mood. The title sequence is very simple and the size if each word represents the meaning of the word, "I" refers to Robert (will Smith - main character), the letter is "I" is very small and represents Robert because he is in this vast city all by himself and isolated so he feels really small, in comparison to legend which is really big. Then Finally after the title sequence the key character is introduced which is Robert played by Will Smith: he is in a sports car with a gun and his dog, with the isolated city around him this then automatically creates a genre which is an action thriller/horror.