Action- Thriller Film Opening

Battle Los Angeles             Opening scene - 3.24 minutes

In the opening scene of battle los angeles it starts with a voice over in multiple languages to suggest it’s a world wide broad cast, towards the end of the voice over an English voice comes on “ one thing is for sure, the world is at war” as she says this the non diagetic sound (music) becomes faster and louder to build tension. Then it shows various fast paced shots of war and fighting with different camera angles, lighting and editing this helps to set the scene of the film to come and its genre. The non diagetic sounds like music and peoples voices become louder to give the sense of panic and destruction as people watch news reports about what is happening, there are then a mix of camera shots from cities, army bases, homes and TV reports, the sound of the TV report is played over the sounds in the shots to give the viewer a good idea of what is happening. As the music and sounds build (non diagetic and diagetic) the camera focuses on the main characters in the film with a medium 2 shot held for about 4-5 seconds.

It then cuts to the next scene where they are on the helicopter as they fly over los angeles, there are lots of added in sound effects like gun shots and radio chatter in this scene along with the build up of music, the camera then cuts to a close up shot of all the soldiers onboard as they will become the main characters in this film, then the camera shows a shot of the window in the chopper, because it is through a sma ll window it focuses the viewers attention on the shot outside there is added in CGI and sound effects here, the music then builds up to its climax as the helicopter starts to shake violently, then the camera switches to a super wide angle shot (or establishing shot) of the city in flames and 8 or 9 helicopters over the top. After the title appears on the screen they switch to a shot of how it was a day earlier, they start with the same establishing shot that they ended the opening scene with to show a contrast, the music and sounds in this scene are more relaxed and some radios playing with music and weather reports this shows a contrast too compared with the panic and confusion voices in the opening scene.