The shining opening title sequence

Film:The shining

Director:Stanley Kubrick

Year:1980

http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/04/10/the-shining/

Mise-en-scen

At the begging of the shining opening credits, you see a great lake, this pretty much continues through-out the whole title scenes, the main focus of the camera shots is nature, this varies from mountain ranges, rivers, hilly landscapes, lakes, forests and much more. This gives us the feeling that you are miles away from civilization as it just a lonely road that seems to be heading nowhere. Also for most of the title sequence there is only the one single car showing that there is no one else around.

Camera shots/angles

The title sequence starts with the camera swooping over a lake, this is an effective way to do a title sequence as it gives and eery lonely feeling to it. The director has also made a lot of his shots symmetrical as in most there is a road or a river or something in the middle. Also though-out the camera seems to be following the car, this gives the impression that it is 'stalking' the car, as it is always behind it and never roams too close. Also during the title sequence the focus of the camera shots is always switching between nature and the the car.

editing

For most of the title sequence the only editing that is used is either cut, which us just a simple change of the shot, or a fade, which is where the last scene fades and the new one takes it's place, a cut does not really add anything to the thriller's aspect, but the fade makes it more eery and has a better effect, this works a lot better with a thriller.

Sound

Straight from the beginning of the title sequence, there is some creepy music, it mostly consists of low pitch notes, and slow long notes. This is really effective at building up tension and gives a real feeling of horror. As the title sequence progresses, the low pitch notes turn to really high pitch notes, it almost sounds as if people are screaming. This is really effective at creating tension and it really creeps the viewer out.