Opening scenes/Theories

We watched a couple of movies which have many different narratives and goes against the usually typical Todorov and Propp. Some of the opening scenes containes The Hermeneutic Code, this was invented by a man called Roland Barthes, his code was to create an enigmatic ability which is basically making the audience ask questions to why the characters are in that situation and how they got there, the information isn't explained immediately at the beginning of the movie like most movies do, which explain the setting and whom the characters are.

Examples of this is Reservoir Dogs, the opening scene confuses the audience as they dont know who the main character is as the camera doesnt focus on one particular charatcer most of the time, this gives a sense of allianation towards the audience as the conversation starts off in the middle and the audience doesn't have a clue on whats going on. This is also emphasised by the fact that the lense sometimes goes unfocused, this may have been purposely used to make the audience become more curious on what is going on between all the characters.

Another movie which does this is Sunset Boulevard, the opening scene we see police cars arrive at a murder scene, we see a body in the pool and then the voice over tells us it's him. This is a great way of making the audience think and wonder how he was murdered and why, it hassortof given us information about the character, but we don't know who he truly is.

A man called Jacques Derrida had a theory of changing the typical stero type of a character to something else that we would not expect. This is perfectly shown through The Pirates of The Caribbean, where Johnny Depp is on top of a mast which seems to be a large pirate ship, the camera angel is a low angle showing us he is the Hero, this is then turned around when he jumps down and we see the whole picture of his ship which is actually a small fishing boat. For Derrida's theory to work, you would have to know the typical stero-type before hand, pirates are usually seen as cunning and witty, also the hero is seen as the smart heroic type. In one single shot all our thoughts on the typical character is turned around.