OPENING SCENE

OPENING SCENE

The establishing shot of the opening scene instantly determines the mood of the film as it shows beauty at a distance from the eye of the beholder, this shot is a flower in focus with a house in the background out of focus, and this automatically sets the story as it is about two lovers separated physically but not spiritually. The focus soon changes from the flower to the house, showing that the feelings of love are neutral among the couple. The camera will slowly approach the house until a figure is evident in the window, this shows the depth of fought that the character is experiencing, which becomes clear once the camera has a clear shot of the aged woman gazing into the sky. This reinforces the stereotype of ‘the lonely old woman reminiscing’. After a few seconds of intense fought non ambient sound of the patter of feet and joyful laughing slowly creep into the shot, before the shot changes to show two small children approaching the old woman’s house, at this moment the sound becomes ambient. Once the children have been seen running towards the house and a close up of the children knocking at door, a close up of the old frail lady smiling is witnessed as if she is slightly surprised at the visit. A graphic match is used to show the children entering the house and then running through the back door into the garden. The grandmother enters the loft with a low angle to show vulnerability a frailty, once in the loft the grandmother instantly finds what she is looking for (this shows the stereotypical view of older generations being organised ) which a small old box. A jump cut will be used to instantly show the grandmother showing her grandchildren the box; this shows the urgency and excitement that revolves around this ancient rusted object. A close up is used to show the opening of the box, this intensifies the importance of the content of the box, which is a diary dated 1939, this sets the genre of the film which is an historical drama as the date isn’t that of recent years. As the diary is opened the writing in side the first few pages are the names of those associated with the filming and editing of the film, this will be accompanied by slow classical music. After around 25 seconds of the opening credits the camera slowly positions itself to the eye line of the grandmother, with the non ambient sound of old music that is clearly recognisable from the 1930’s, the close up of the eye then zooms out and the scene has changed to the time of world war two, this tells the audience that the character is the same person but earlier on in life. This younger version of the grandmother then starts dancing happily with a young male dressed in uniform before an urgent announcement comes on the radio announcing the declaration of war, the male and female are shown saying their goodbyes to one another before an emotional cuddle with a 360 degree motion of the camera. The patter of small feet is built up once again over the shot before a shot change to show children from the time of war scurrying quickly in order to be evacuated, this shows nice juxtaposition between the patter of the children from today against that of the patter of children’s feet from the war as the mood is completely different although the action is the same.

Written by Max Brawn