An empty landscape, an endless, desolate (and TechniScope-horizontal) landscape... ... suddenly replaced by another enormous sun-baked landscape, and the long shot is instantaneously transformed into a close-up of... ... a human face, staring into the camera -- and, by extension,…
From Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, Glendale, CA: When Jim invited me to participate in this survey, I accepted with enthusiasm and then immediately began to worry. Every example of a great opening shot that was…
View image: The crawl recedes... View image; The camera tilts down. View image; The surface of a planet spans the lower part of the frame as a ship passes through the top. "Star Wars" has, not surprisingly, been the popular…
View image: It starts here... View image ... and ends here. And nearly everything that happens, except for a slow movement in on the house, happens off-screen. From Richard T. Jameson, Editor, Movietone News, 1971-81; Editor, Film Comment, 1990-2000: The…
View image: From synapses deep inside the brain... View image View image: ... out through a sweaty pore... From Robert Humanick, a film odyssey: I'm not sure if this applies to the "opening shot" rules, in that it is included…
View image View image Shane Carruth's ingenious "Primer" (2004) offers a textbook example, if you will, of a "What are we looking at?" opening shot. Linear and rectangular or trapezoidal patterns of light dot the dark screen. Then the irregular,…
View image View image View image From John Hartl, film critic for MSNBC, Seattle, WA: “Nights of Cabiria��? (1957) The opening scene in Federico Fellini’s greatest film presents a pattern that will be repeated in the story of Cabiria, a…
View image View image View image From Ali Arikan, Istanbul, Turkey: The first shot of "Withnail and I" is deceptive in its simplicity. As the camera opens on the eponymous "I" of the title, obviously depressed and downtrodden, we see…
View image: To sleep, perchance to dream... View image: The dreamer awakes. View image: Meanwhile, on the other side of the world... (From the opening shot of "Lost in Translation.") Does this shot look uncannily familiar? A man asleep, or…
View image: The kind of thing that can ruin a childhood. From Robert Daniel, Birmingham, AL: "Deep Red" (Dario Argento, 1975): The scene opens a floor-level shot. We hear a stabbing sound and a loud scream. The knife falls in…
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