Watching Documentary

In our lesson we watched a documentary called 'Watching'. I found it really interesting as it talked about how directors have used different techniques to capture the audience attention.
As we watched it, we were given some questions to answer:

1.  What does Thomas Sutcliffe mean when he say's "Films need to seduce their audience into long term commitments. While there are many types of seduction, the temptation to go for instant arousal is almost irresistible"?

He means, its a commitment to watch a film for 2hours therefore, the film must capture the audience's attention from the start - 'instant arousal'

A good esample of this is is the opening to Kill Bill:

2.  According to director Jean Jacques Beineix, what are the risks of 'instant arousal'?

He believes that by starting with an instant arousal will make it hard to capture attention later on through the film. "If you start very strong, then you raise the question, what do i do next?"
He feels that the audience should wait, nurture their decier and let it grow, then the satifaction will come.

3.  Explain what "A good beginning must make the audience feel that it doesn't know nearly enough yet, and at the same time make sure that it dosen't know too little."

The audience must establish the characters, storyline and the the tone of the movie from the opening. The tone of the film will tell them if its a film to laugh, cray or cringe at. However if they know to much the plot will be given away, and there would be less of a big reveale. The audience should not understand everything, but should want to know more.

4.  What does critic, Stanley Kauffmann describe as the classic opening? Why does this work?

An establishing shot of New York City, to a close up of a building, the camera would then go up the building to a window, then in the window, past the reception desk, to a private office with a smart looking guy sitting down. This simple technique works as it establishes the location, the occupation of the main characters but most importantly the organisation of the world. 

5.  Why is Kyle Cooper's title sequence to the film SEVEN so effective?

This creepy, distorted opening work so well as it stright away wakes the audience up to get ready for whats about to happen, and sets the tone of the movie. It feels like part of the movie, almost becoming the first scene to the movie, as it already shows us the phcological state of the charecter as well as forcasting alot of what happens in the movie, two of the many reasons why this works so well.

6.  What did Orson Welles want to achieve with his opening to the film A Touch Of Evil? What did Universal Studios do to it and why?

Welles original intended the opening to the film, to included no credits or title music, insteded he wanted to plunge the audience in tho the movie with out having time to prepare. However in the finale cut, Universal Studios added titles and music!

7.  What is meant by "A favorite trick of film Noir"? What is the trick?

Film Noir is when the end of the film is shown at the beginning. the rest of the film then goes on to show how the film got to that ending. It work as it wakes people up at the start of the film, and intrigs them as to how this happend. This is scene in the opening of Casino: