Opening Sequence- Titanic Analysis

                                                                 Titanic Movie Opening Titles

Director: James Cameron

Cinematographer: Russell Carpenter

Date Realised: November 18^th 1997

We open up with the company
Digitally mastered THX
which is a company that specialise in keeping quality sound for movie theatres, computer speakers, screening rooms and televisions. It is a spinoff company form Lucas film which informs the spectator that they are watching a high quality movie which is run by a well-known company.

We open up with the opening credits to see 20^th century fox. We instantly recognise the theme tune played in the background and we understand who has helped promote the film. Picture fades and we hear the sound of a woman singing a group of soft sounding notes conveying her remorse and grief over the Titanic. This hints at what is to come and we as an audience realise this will be a solemn opening.

We fade into an establishing shot that is in a sepia tone. This allows the audience to feel in the moment of the scene and almost feel like they are on the dock in 1912 waving goodbye to the passengers and their loved ones. It also shows us the main ship, the Titanic, and a vast crowd of people waving goodbye on the ship as the camera pans onto it. The director uses dramatic irony in this shot because we know what eventually happens to the Titanic, thus enabling us to feel smarter as a spectator and gain respect for Nolan for acknowledging us as an audience. We also get to see the vastness of the ship as the camera pans onto it. The boat nearly takes up the whole screen compared to the dock. This shot was primarily used to create a sense of wonderment and power connected to the Titanic which in turn allows us, the audience, to be in awe of the ship. This will allow for a greater impact for when the Titanic eventually sinks.

We cross fade to a medium close up of people waving on the shore while a cameraman films the extras on the Titanic. The titles ‘Paramount pictures and Twentieth century fox present’
appear. This comes into the left third of the camera to enable the opening titles to be framed in the picture, to not to become unbalanced or to cover up anyone on the boat that is waving. By doing so the shot allows us to take in the full camera shot without losing any information given to us visually by the director and cinematographer such as the waving hands. The editor has also positioned the titles so that the Titanic, the cameraman in shot and the arms make a frame around it enabling it to be more identifiable. The camera slowly pans as well to add kinetic energy to the moving boat and to allow the spectator to realise that the boat is about to journey off to its doom and that the waving hands and happy faces are ironic because of what is to come.

We cross fade again to see another title exclaiming the words
A Light storm Entertainment Production
this is level with the extras on the higher balconies. We now begin to notice the sheer volume of people on the boat and how they all seemed to be of middle or upper class. This can convey the division of the time period and how still lower classes had to take the lower decks in order to keep out of the way of other passengers. The title font is not relevant to the times however it gives us the notion that we are looking back on previous events and that this is not in real time (such as the use of sepia tone to convey this is past footage). It hints at an epic journey but also does not take away any elements of the story nor take any suspense away. The use of companies also convey an epic drama such as Paramount studios being involved and we become engrossed in the film because we are enticed by the narrative and how these well-known companies will play out the well-known story.

A long shot is used to portray a group of children and two young girls waving goodbye in slow motion. The editor uses no titles to allow us to focus in the families affected and puts the footage in slow motion to allow the impact of what is about to happen to sink in. This is the shortest shot of them all at about about two seconds long, on the contrary this is the most poignant shot of the opening sequence because it conveys how no one was immune from the disaster and how it affected everybody on board no matter how young, old, man, woman, child or (the most important of all) class.

We cross fade to a cold shot of the water. It is in real time and Nolan visually informs us of this using a blue colour onto the water, which evokes emotions of cold and despair. This allows a stark contrast to the previous shots, where there was a happy feeling to the sequence. The camera is still in slow motion to allow the ice cold water to eerily float around in shot. The title fades in as the water continues to move, allowing more kinetic energy to continue even though the boat is not in shot. The words
‘Titanic’
are clear in view. Nolan allows holds this shot for twelve seconds in order for the non-diegetic sound of the singer and the main title to linger. We are now aware of the title of the film and we are forced to focus on this because there is no motion in the camera expect for the black sea and the light reflecting off it, giving the scene a eulogy like feel which allows us to remember the tragedy.  

The next shot cross fades underwater and allows Morden day to overtake the past. This effect allows the audience to move into real time as well as give me insight in how to fade into the present time after our opening. The use of blue is a sign of coldness and could be interpreted as loss of hope or the reality of finding the Titanic after it sunk one hundred and two years ago. The submarine floats towards us in a long shot and fills up the shot with its cold light to represent the darkness that has been filled with despair and the coldness of the ocean at that depth. We hear the diegetic sound from the submarine as it sends out it sonar and bubbles can be heard as we glide over the top of the Submarine, allowing us to immerse ourselves in this CGI world.

We fade to another shot of the submarine which is heading closer to the camera and this time we see the lights of the submarine and the body of it. The camera moves into an Ariel/ extreme long shot of the two submarines, which we were unaware of at the beginning of the underwater sequence. We gently zoom out to allow the audience not only to take in what they have just witnessed butt also represent the two main protagonists as a symbol of hope as they float away into the darkness, being a symbol that there can be hope in the darkest of times. At the era of the titanic there was a lot of discrimination between classes that can be seen throughout the late 19^th century and plays such as in 'An Inspector Calls’.