Response to the "Watching" documentary.

In this lesson, we watched a documentary called "Watching". This documentary was about film openings and how affective they can be, and also what makes them effective. Thomas Sutcliffe says that "Films need to seduce their audience into long term commitment. While there are many types of seduction, the temptation to go for instant arousal is almost irresistible." By this quote, i think that he means that films need to make the audience interested in watching them and not make them get bored and want to leave halfway through the film. I also think that the latter part of this quote suggests that putting full effort into the opening of the film is irresistible to make the audience fully engaged.

Another quote from this documentary is "A good beginning must make the audience feel that it doesn't know nearly enough yet, and at the same times make sure that it doesn't know too little." The meaning of this quote is pretty obvious. The audience must be engaged enough so that they are eager to watch more of the film, and find out exactly what is happening. If you don't give the audience enough information at the start, they are more likely to be too confused, during the rest of the film, to figure out whats happening.

Critic Stanley Kauffmann describes the classic film opening as starting off with an Establishing shot, specifically in the east of New York. The next shot should be of a building, and then a close up of a window. After this, there should be a shot of what's inside the window, most likely a office, and then you should introduce a character. I believe that this is the perfect movie opening because you are given just the right amount of information about the surroundings, and an introduction to one of the characters, where you can then make connections as to what the story is about.

Kyle Cooper's title sequence to the film Seven, is extremely effective in my opinion. The mysteriousness of this is extremely engaging. There is alot of tension, suspense created, and the viewers are put on edge as they have no idea of what will happen next. There is not alot of information given about what actually happens in the film,  but the way that the colours, camera angles, and font is involved, makes the viewers interested in what may happen throughout the film.