Opening Title Sequences

The Shining
1980
Stanley Kubrick

The opening for this film starts with low, brass music, taking us across a lake in which there is a tiny island. The scene is magnificent and unconvential for a thriller film, what with the calm, clear lake, attractive surroundings, bright sky and breathtaking mountain view. The camera sweeps across the lake, in a straight line, until it reaches the island, at what point it takes a sudden change in direction. This could be symbolic in terms of the rest of the film; everything going well until something as small as the island sets it all off and causes everything to change.
Accompanied by the sombre tone of the music, reminiscent of a death march, the scene is unnerving. With all the grandeur on the screen, the soundtrack does not quite fit with the beauty which we are experiencing.
The music then changes slightly, with an almost electronic sound being put over the intial music, similar to striking a tuning fork. As the car follows it's winding road further and further into the mountains, the music begins to suggest that things will change for the people travelling inside the car, and not necessarily in a good way.
The car is dwarfed by it's surroundings, a small yellow VW Beetle on a narrow road, looking miniscule in comparison to the imposing mountain set behind it. This emphasises just how small the vehicle is and instills a sense of how alone the travellers are on their journey. Being in an environment like this and being so insignificant in comparison highlights the isolation which is likely to be drawn upon throughout the film.
The inital scene is stunning, welcoming, warm and breathtaking, yet as the car progresses through the landscape turns into something much colder and less desirable. The steep drop to the side of the road is a stark contrast to the flat plains which the car previously travelled on, and alongside the music, which sounds almost ghostly with the high pitched noises it includes, we get the sense that not everything is okay.
Through the entirety of the opening scene, everything changes, even from the types of trees which we see. At the beginning we see deciduous trees, but as they reach their destination they are replaced by much hardier coniferous ones.
The font used for the credits are an unusual choice due to their bright hue and sans serif font. The cyan tone certainly stands out over the various different backgrounds, but it is so bright that it makes the viewers question themselves as to why this choice was made. It is a startling colour and contrasts deeply to the scene it is played over. This could be understood as portraying a startling change which is likely to occur.

The shots used, such as the extreme long shot when the car finally arrives at it's destination, an isolated hotel in the middle of a harsh looking winter, manage to capture how truly alone the characters are, perhaps the only convention in the entire opening sequence.

 

Dexter

2006
Showtime

Dexter is a TV show and hence the opening sequence is the same used for every episode. For this reason it must portray a recurring message and this one is done particularly well through various semiotic features.
The opening begins with the image of a mosquito landing on someone's arm and then the character smacking down on it violently. There is a red stain left on his arm. The camera then pulls focus away from the bug and onto the face of the man who crushed it, who is smiling proudly. This could be seen as reflecting the characters nature and how he takes pleasure in even the very smallest things such as the victory over such a small creature.
There is then a shot to implement the name of the show, (referring to the image above) whereby the characters name is written out in what seems to be watery blood, swirling around inside the letters and even spilling out, what with the blot beneath the 'X' and the splashes to the bottom right. This is evidently going to get the viewer interested because it is an unusual scene and we are naturally going to want to find out what made this character, Dexter, so bemused by the killing of an insignificant mosquito.
The next scene is of the character standing in front of a mirror. We only see the back of his head, not his face which is not only pulled out of the focus but also rather blurred. There is great detail shown of the back of his head though, which could be understood as showing a certain anonymity.
The music in the background of all of this is eerily upbeat, contrasting hugely against the anonymous mosquito killer and the bloody words. There is both a mysterious undertone and then a Latin style instrumental mixed together which gives off the sense that there are two differing sides to Dexter's story.
We are then taken on a journey through Dexter's everyday routine, with an extreme close up of him running his fingers over his stubble to test whether or not he will need to shave today, then to an unnerving shot of him angling his neck in order to shave properly. This unnerves us as viewers because not only is it a close up shot at an angle which we would not ordinarily experience, it is a delicate area and he is holding a razor to it. The way in which there are two shots of this; one of him finding the appropriate location to begin, then switching to him dragging the razor up the throat, suggests a certain caution and apprehensiveness, as well as a calculating side. He is calculating where he ought to begin and this trait comes across throughout the rest of the opening sequence due to the way in which he does each individual activity.

When Dexter begins to prepare breakfast we begin to question him, due to the shot of him slicing through what looks like flesh with a serrated blade. The darkness surrounding the object which he is cutting does not help his case as it gives off the impression that he is doing so in a darkened room, meeting typical thriller style conventions. Yet this is not the case and we see him dropping a piece of what appears to be bacon steak into his frying pan.

The mundane task of preparing breakfast is not so mundane throughout the title sequence and we see him splattering his plate with ketchup, a few fast shots of cutlery griping through food. Seeing him chew and hearing the diegetic sounds of him doing so make him seem more human.
A shot of blades spinning in a coffee grinder emphasise an 'at-ease' attitude towards sharps of all sorts; razors, knives and even the rotating blades of a coffee grinder.
We see strong hands pushing down on a pump, cracking an egg, slicing a grapefruit. All these trivial things combine to portray the image of an unusual person preparing his breakfast and getting ready for the day.

This shot of a grapefruit being sliced and then squeezed also emphasises the power inside this man, from the extreme close up of the blade cutting through the fruit and the low angle shot of the juice flying out to the way in which he reduces the half into next to nothing in the space of a few cinematic seconds. The fruit inside being red is also semiotic because we expect the fruit he is slicing to actually be an orange due to the tone of it's skin, but it releases a red pulp when squeezed, referring back to the blood and red theme that is prominent throughout the entire opening. This gives off the impression that Dexter is not all that he seems and that his insides do not match the exterior which he gives off.
The shot of the now squeezed grapefruit half is gruesome, the flesh looking abused and mutilated. This image is a good one in terms of iconography and hidden meanings, mainly because the inside of the fruit is referred to as a "flesh", which has been exposed when it has been cut open.

There is also an emphasis on Dexter locking the door behind him, shown through the way that there is an scene showing this, despite it being only 1 second long. Most of the time in shows and films we do not see this standard action and it is this which makes us realise that there is definitely another side to him which he is evidently trying to keep away from the outside world, through visibly locking it away.

North By North West

1959
Alfred Hitchcock

The opening of the title sequence is the opening credit of the MGM lion, but following that is a bright green screen with lines coming in both horizontally and vertically. They seem to be following some kind of a patterna and they move slowly, which could be construed as imagery representing the idea of "everything coming together". This is only the beginning but it does not have to be taken as suggesting a happy ending; it could instead be taken as a suggestion that there are many different parts of the story which come together gradually to put together a bigger, more interesting picture.
The music behind this scene is high pitched, orchestral, almost like a string quartet, although there are undertones of deeper, more bass music following the highest noises, almost suggesting that the plot will have many climaxes and that each one will be followed by a decrease in excitement until the next interesting part.
The way which the credits appear on the screen - coming in sharply from various sides, lingering briefly before darting out of shot.

There is then a match cut, with the grid like lines turning into a glass window. Although it is really just a window, the numerous lines fill the thriller conventions of bars on the windows well.

This window shows the busy life going on in the reflection of them, but does not show what is on the other side. Also, we know these are windows and hence we do not know what is going on inside, due to the mirrored effect on the panes. This could be taken to imply that there is a secret side and that there are various hidden aspects to the plot and it's characters.
The title sequence is split into three distinct parts. The third part is a ground level long shot which shows the relationship between the people in the city and their surroundings. It creates a sense of anonymity, what with the people walking by each other, not acknowledging anyone around them, yet from them all you get some kind of sense of story, be it from how they are dressed, what they are carrying or how they are walking. This emphasises how easily one can get lost in such an environment and reviewing the plot for this film in order to help me in understanding the sequence it also shows how easily people can be mistaken for others, because of how little knowledge the people who commute together every day actually know about eachother. The first shot is of doors to what is presumably an office building, with many people leaving, entering and passing them in a hurry. It then turns to a scene of multiple people hurrying down into what is probably an underground train station. The fact that there is no people leaving, nor is there a method to get out visible, instills a certain sense of danger and almost claustrophobia. One cannot help but worry for the people piling into this small space with clearly little to no thought about this.

  The final shot shows a man running for the bus only to have the door shut in his face as he approaches the step. This shows the cold nature of people in the city and how they merely want to get their job done and go home, with little regard to how anyone else achieves this themselves. This suggests that there will be a rather unsympathetic tone throughout the film.