The tone/ mood of the grease opening scene is a generally happy and up beat one. The opening credits gives us as the audience the feeling of fun, hapiness and draws us in by the 'feel good' mood of the scene. I think that grease has a lot of serious points in the movie as well as the light hearted feel good things that the opening scene portrays but we as the audience when watching the opening scene don't really feel that. The tone/ mood. The feeling of hapiness, fun etc is generally consistent through out the whole of the opening scene.
The song playing through the opening scene is 'grease is the word' by the beegees and is an up beat song about (well in my interpretation) being a teenager
"This is the life of illusion
Right trouble laced with confusion
What are we doing?"- The confusion of being a teenager etc... this song already gives us a clear indication of the age group of the characters in the movie also showing a target audience.
"We take the pressure and we throw away
Conventionalitly belongs to yesterday
There is a chance that we can make it so far
We start believing now but we can be who we are"- These lines talking about living for you and not being constricted to being conventinal which I guess you could say is one of the themes of grease.
Along with the upbeat song with a clear message and meaning there is also the images (animation) to go with it that sets the mood/ tone of the opening scene.
The song stays constant throughout the whole of the opening credits so generally the mood is the same. I would say that the mood is mainly created by the up beat music and you get that feeling of happiness, energy. The up beat music also helps to tell us the fact that the movie is a musical by the typ of song played.
The animation also helps to set the tone/ mood of the movie just by the fact it is animation! Because the opening is animation we automatically think that it can't be to serious. Cartoons are generally something watched by kids and so are a little bit of fun to start the movie with. I don't know to many cartoons that try to set serious or even depressing tones and the way that the animation is done in grease I think proves my point even more. The faces though similar to the characters I would say almost add a little bit of humour to the opening as they are a little wacky (For ecample Danny Zuko has very pursed lips and at one point Rizzo has an impossibly long neck) As well as setting the humour the animation slso sets the theme of normaility of the normal teenager getting up and getting ready for the first day back at school. There are different moods set for every character because of the contrasting of images. The imagery also helps set the tone and the moods of the characters. You see Sandy surrounded by bunnies, deer and birds and this gives us the impression that she is a happy person full of excitement and energy and we get the feeling that when we are with her we to will feel happy and energetic, whilst Danny at the start of the scene as a messy room, hair covering his face etc... which sets the mood for his character.
The speed/ pace of the opening credits also helps set the mood of the movie. Generally grease is quite a fast paced movie as a lot of different things happen throughout the movie. The opening credits are reasonably mid- fast paced. The transitions especially are very quick which in my opinion makes you take a closer look at the screen and definitely helps add interest.
As a general statement the opening credits for this film really helps to emphasize the direction that the rest of the movie is taking especially in terms of the mood and the tone.
Great description of the film and you have clearly explained how some techniques have set the mood in the opening. But you still have A LOT to do!! Get cracking: you need to complete four posts on four techniques-- look at the handouts and my blog to see what sort of things you need to answer and email me if you have any questions.
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