Although this film is a children’s film, from the opening sequence you get the impression that it is a horror film. But it would only seem scary to young children and would not particularly follow the known rules of a typical horror film.
From this opening sequence you get quite a good feel for the narrative right from the beginning of the clip which starts with narration introducing the narrative to the audience. You can see that it will be a scary film yet with light-hearted elements, there are lots of characters involved in the film. They all belong to a town and from the opening it is easy to tell that the film will be set here and based on the characters in the town. From the song played throughout the opening sequence the film is definitely Halloween themed, you can also see this from the characters shown.
This takes me straight onto the characters themselves. All of the characters in the film are introduced one by one or in small groups right the way through the sequence, alongside the music. Nearer the end of the sequence the main character is clearly highlighted as ‘Jack’ The Pumpkin King. All of the characters are from Halloween such as witches and ghosts and are quite scary but they are all smiling which gives the film a happier more light hearted feeling making it appeal more to the target audience of children.
The atmosphere of the opening sequence is very creepy; the mise-en-scene contributes to this greatly as does the music and appearance of the characters. However the music does have a happier undertone which lightens the atmosphere slightly from its darker origin. The atmosphere does appear very mysterious and strange even with the happier tones.
The only special effects used are, the CGI which is very effective and of a very good quality and the dialogue which matches up to the movements of the characters mouth excellently. As you can see from the picture below the characters and their surroundings are very detailed and the quality of them is high.
Happy upbeat music is the main sound in this clip, it is made up of a melody and singing from the characters in the sequence. This music contrasts to the scene as one is upbeat and happy whereas the other is creepy and dark. At the very beginning of the clip before the singing starts there is narration to introduce the narrative to the audience. There are few sound effects on this sequence there are only ones within the scene for example, pages of a book turning and doors closing.
The continuity editing within the sequence is immensely smooth and is easy for the audience to follow, which is good as the audience will mainly consist of children. There is also linear editing present which makes it clear to the viewer and the sequence is then in chronological order making it easier to understand. The only other apparent piece of editing is the one fade in aclip near to the beginning.
The shots that the camerawork consists of are:
- An establishing shot which tracks downwards spiralling
- A pan
- Tracking forwards which is the majority of the clip with a few winding parts to it
- An extreme close up
- A 4 shot and many other multiple character shots of a similar fashion
- Medium shot
- Long shot
- Tracking side wards to the right
Most of these shots are very short and quick and just an introduction of one or a group of characters so they have to more on to the next one immediately.
If I was to freeze the second from last frame it would be called the mise-en scene which is everything within that frame. So this frame consisted of all of the characters introduced previously the town itself including all of the buildings, fire torches and a pond.
Overall I think this opening sequence gives the audience many clues to the narrative and it is a very good introduction to the film. However I do think that the main theme of the film is too scary for the younger children that would be viewing it. But again this is balanced out with the happy upbeat characters.
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