The document analyzes the micro elements of shots and camera techniques used in the opening scene of the film Back to the Future. It describes how the panning clocks establish that the film is about time. It then shows the news reporting stolen plutonium, indicating it will be important later. Various shots introduce the first character, a teenage boy, and show him finding the stolen plutonium, causing an explosion. The analysis of these micro elements will help the author construct an engaging opening for their own film.

1. Micro Elements
Back to the future

2. A medium shot panning the clocks lasts 38 seconds. This illustrates to the
audience that the movie is about time . It is almost a tense scene as you
see no people and machines are working as well as there being no
background music, so you feel like something dramatic is about to
happen.
The camera goes onto a TV that is on the news channel and tells the
audience that plutonium has been stolen so you know this will come up
later in the film and a main character probably stole it. This is made clear
by the fact that the camera stays on the TV and zooms in on it for 13
seconds. Close up and extreme close up is used in this part.

3. The camera follows round the room and shows what is happening as there is
lots of machines being used and this illustrates to the audience that the owner
of the house is clever and also a important part of the story. The fact that no
one is around and when the dog food drops there is already lots this adds to
that adds to that theory. The camera switches a few times in this scene so that it
is not constantly moving.
The audience are introduced to the first character which means that he will
most likely be the centre of the story. The fact that he knows where the key is
and that he says ‘‘hey doc’’ tells the audience straight away that he is close to
the owner of the house. They use a medium/close up shot on the characters
legs to give a first impression without showing what he loos like. You can tell
that he is relatively young probably a teenager due to his style and he is carrying
a skateboard and by the sound of his voice.

4. The use of a close and low shot and that the camera is following the skateboard
shows that the skateboard is going to be important ad it hits a box that we see
contains plutonium which the audience know was stolen because of the news
broadcast. The characters face is yet to be revealed because a low shot is used
throughout.
The extreme close up to the characters hand shows the audience what he's
doing and because his face is yet to be shown they might think he's up to
something and he might be a ‘mysterious’ character.

5. The camera zooms out and we can see that the character has plugged instrument
into a mic so the audience are no longer concerned with the machine being a
weapon. Yet the character still turns away when the camera zooms out which
makes the audience wonder what type of person he is and who he is.
The camera continues to zoom out but then suddenly zooms in on the guitar pick
which tells the audance that something is about to happen due to that guitar pick

6. The camera switches to a side view and the audience get their first view of the
characters face and the use of a angle switch shows the force of the explosion
on the character .
The camera goes to the front view then to a close up top/front view to show
the damage the character has caused and how far the character went. The
audience feel concerned for the character because of how much landed on
him

7. How this analysis of the micro elements will help me in
the construction of my film opening
• Micro elements help to show the audience what is going on in a scene and the knowledge I have
gained will allow me when to use certain shots to get emotional reactions from the audience. For
example when I want to make a scene tense I could slowly zoom in or out and I could also use the
pan shot. The micro elements help to get the audience thinking and gets a reaction from them,
with different techniques getting different reactions.