Narrative

My narrative is fairly simple as my film is a two minute opening to the beginning of a film and when researching and looking at other drama films it is clear that there is not any in depth narrative shown within the first two minutes and instead the titles are normally incorporated and a clear location is set as well as an introduction to a character(s). 


Forrest Gump shows this beginning narrative well by following a feather throughout a location by panning with the camera whilst the titles are dissolving up onto the screen and then Tom Hanks' character is slowly introduced using the mise en scene playing close detail to his clothes and shoes and immediately building up a sense of character and making the spectator immediately have assumptions of the man they are seeing and opinions of his character. As he opens up his suitcase we also learn more about the character and become intrigued to understand why he is where he is and what has brought him there. The attention to detail is key within this opening as there is no dialogue used and so the filming by the director has to speak for itself and use the non diagetic sound of the soundtrack in the background and the mise en scene specifically to catch the spectators attention and tell us key elements about the film and character. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7voy1vit6Y

Looking at this opening to Forrest Gump is very inspiring to my own opening as I don't want to use any dialogue myself within the first two minutes and instead want the filming to do the talking for me. I plan to start the opening off with still shots that fade into each other of the location of the film and these will last up to around 30 seconds. Towards the end of the still shots a house will be shown and after this I want to use a variety of shots to lead the spectator throughout the house using the key attention to detail within mise en scene to show the location of the first scene and the type of setting my film will be based around. I then will wind around the house and up the stairs to come to a bedroom that will again my panned around as well as separate edited shots cutting between each other to build up the background knowledge of the character that I want to introduce. This will then result in the slow entering of the character that will be a young girl sat on her bed with toys scattered around her playing. 


I don't want the narrative within this first beginning scene to be too complicated as a plot as it is simply the beginning two minutes and as I have seen throughout researching my drama genre films there is never anything that occurs to normally shock the audience like say thrillers or action films within this first two minutes. So instead I decided for a typical opening of a location established and a wide range of mise en scene to build up the location as well as the character and then the small introduction of the character.