Film Inspirations

For inspiration of my film opening. I decided to analyze these three action films.

    John Wick (2014)

    The Dark Knight (2008)

    Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

John Wick (2014)

Content
To me, what stands out most about John Wick is how simple the story is. John Wick's motivation to get revenge is the entire plot of the film. What I like about it is that the film doesn’t explain his past, but rather uses John Wick's own actions and other characters' reactions to him instead to create his character. I think I could apply this to my project as I want the characters in my film to be underexplained like John Wick to create a sense of mystery and to give viewers that feeling of  "Why is he so important."

Opening
The opening of John Wick isn't really action packed, but rather it shows the after math of what looks to be a big action scene. This creates that sense of mystery as mentioned earlier. This gives me an inspiration for my film as creating an opening scene like this is a much more viable option for me as a student rather than an action packed opening filled with vfx or fight scenes.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Content
Unlike John Wick, The Dark Knight focuses on multiple characters at once. Even though Batman is the main character, the Joker plays just as big of a role in the story. At first, I thought this was something I wanted to copy, but the more I think about it, the less practical it feels for a short project and the limited time I have.

I feel like trying to balance multiple characters/story lines in an opening could make things confusing, and I’d rather fully develop one character than introduce several important main characters. 

Opening
The opening bank robbery is effective because it sets the movie's tone without showing Batman at all. The Joker is defined through his actions, and this made me realize that an opening doesn’t need to introduce the protagonist immediately to be engaging.

However, for my project, I still want the audience to see the main character early on. While I like this opening, I don’t think delaying the introduction of my protagonist would work as well for what I’m trying to do.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Content
This movie opening relies almost entirely on visual storytelling rather than dialogue, much like John Wick.

While my project won’t be nonstop action like this movie, I do want to lean more into the idea of showing rather than telling. I will take influence from this film as I like the sort of fast paced intro where the viewer is kind of just thrown into the world with little time to adjust.

Opening
The opening immediately throws the audience into the world. I'm thinking of copying this movie opening where the beginning is an action scene with no context, as to me those types of openings are the most engaging and I personally like them.

Takeaways

Looking at these three films helped me narrow down what I want my opening to do. Rather than trying to introduce too much story, I want to clearly establish a character and the beginning of the plot. After looking at these film openings, I realized that for an action project, visual storytelling matters wayyyy more than a complex dialogue scene.

Going forward, I want to continue researching action films that focus on a few, maybe two, characters  to gain more inspiration. Even though my opening will only show a small part of my story, I'm still going to treat the project as if it’s part of a complete film, and I'm excited to start the production.