1. Applying Genre and
Narrative to five film
openings.
By Hana Dervisholli.

2. Shank (2010)
This film is a film which is based on what happens to London in the
‘future’ its about deprived individuals who make their own small
communities and are resulted into committing crime because of
the shortage of food. Its an action film located in the slums of
London.

3. Narrative of Shank
Its hard to apply narrative to film openings as their only a couple of minutes
long. But in the short time in which I’ve watched shank. It clearly shows a
young boy running away from a boy on a motorbike. It seems impossible
for him at first to get away from the chase but he outsmarts the chasers by
jumping of a high bridge. He's being chased around a estate and up and
down stairs. At first you see only one boy chasing him, but after you see
another boy corner him and block off he's escape. The narrative which I
have chosen to apply to my 1st film opening is the one of Claude Levi-
Strauss, these are binary oppositions through what we as humans make
sense of most scenarios I.e. good vs. evil. We understand the concept of
good being the opposite of evil he observed that all narratives are
organized around the conflict between binary oppositions. I have chose
this type of narrative as from the film opening only being one of a chase, I
can make out of a boy who being chased by a boy on a motorbike is
intimidated and subconsciously in my opinion is the good trying to escape
from the bad, good vs. bad or the scared vs. fearless.

4. College Road Trip. (2008)
When an overachieving high school student decides to travel
around the country to choose the perfect college, her overprotective cop
father also decides to accompany her in order to keep her on the straight
and narrow. With Lawrence wanting his baby to attend local college
Northwestern, sabotage is top of his agenda. But daddy's little girl won’t
be the only one getting educated on this path to enlightenment as life
lessons and madcap capers make this a trip they’ll never forget.

5. Narrative of College road Trip.
This is a comedy film. From the opening I’ve observed that it’s about an
African American family, who’s dad wants the best for her daughters
education and occupation in life. Ever since she was a baby he had he's
eye on the college for he's daughter to attend which is closest to his home
”25mins away”. And has a high academic score. I want to apply the genre
of Tzvetan Todorov- who believes that all stories begin with an
‘equilibrium’ where any potential forces are in balance. This is disrupted
by some event, setting in motion a series of other events. Problems are
solved so that order can be restored to close with a second but different
‘equilibrium’ or status quo. I believe this is an equilibrium because I can
sense that the father will send her to the college he wants her to go to,
which he does and then when you meet the girl, she looks like a feisty girl
who knows what she wants from her life. So maybe she will end up
disobeying what her father wants for her and up changing colleges.
Equilibrium -> Disruption of equilibrium -> reordered equilibrium

6. Superbad (2007)
Two co-dependent high school seniors are
forced to deal with separation anxiety after their
plan to stage a booze-soaked party goes awry.

7. Narrative to Superbad.
From the opening of the film, I've observed that the
main characters are two young men who look like
teenagers. One is driving a car whilst talking on
the phone and the other who is on the other line
to the boy in the car. Is getting ready at home.
The conversation is about porn sites and the
sicker forms of porn which come in the site. I
narrative that I am going to apply to this film is
Roland Barthes’ the semantic code- this code
refers to connotation within the text that gives
additional meaning over the basic denotative
meaning of the story.

8. The exorcism of Emily Rose. (2005)
A lawyer takes on a negligent homicide case
involving a priest who performed an exorcism
on a young girl. (Horror).

9. Narrative to Exorcism Of Emily Rose.
The opening start with the imagine of a house situated in the middle of
nowhere. A man seems walk very slowly over to the house whilst treading
on snow. You can continually hear music and the sound of cold eerie wind.
He knocks on the door and nobody answers, then he looks around him
almost scared and sees a beehive in the porch which has a lot of bees
swarming around it. Bees are usually associated with summer and flowers
and this gives me an out of place feeling of discomfort as I have never
before seen a beehive contrasting in a snowy, cold location. The man
walks away because nobodies answering the door. But he turns around to
face and observe the house and he sees a lady looking out the window
and then move away. I then stopped the movie there. I'm applying Roland
Barthes’- enigma code- any element of the story which is left unexplained
and hence becomes a mystery to the reader. Even though I don’t enjoy
horrors. As the audience I now want to watch the film and find out what's
so bad about that house? What's happened in it? What's going to happen?
Why is this man going there in the first place?

10. A Beautiful Mind. (2001)
After a brilliant but asocial mathematician
accepts secret work in cryptography, his life
takes a turn to the nightmarish.

11. Narrative to A Beautiful Mind.
This opening shows a large group of men who look very smart at their first
day at the Princeton university. The men seem to all be very intelligent
mathematicians who look like they all come from a rich background. The
main character Russell Crowe is sitting at the black looking very self
orientated, and unsociable at the introduction speech. Outside every
other man is conversation amongst themselves while has playing with a
crystal glass reflecting the sunlight with the glass off other objects such as
a bowl of lemons. He seems like the type of man who looks at every little
thing in large depth and specification. Who sees the beauty to everything
in nature and life. When he does have a conversation with one of the men.
He seems very unconfident and he stutters. He seems shy and weird
compared to the other men. I'm applying again Claude Levi-Strauss’
narrative theory of binary oppositions. For example Russell Crowe is the
abnormal compared to has peers. Normal vs. abnormal, unpopular vs.
popular- the man he seemed to be conversing with had a lot of men
around him who seemed to be friends with him.