Film opening

Back to the Future was was distributed by Universal Pictures in 1985, executive producer Steven Spielberg and director Robert Zemeckis brought us this comedy-adventure featuring a cast of then largely unknown actors such as Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd and Crispin Glover and a plot involving time travel. Written by Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale Back to the Future has become one of the most popular and successful film trilogies ever created.
The opening sequence of this film is an unusual one as it does not the introduce the character to things such as the plot and location to the film, this is used as an advantage because the way the film does this is makes us, the audience want to carry on watching because it intrigues us and we want to find out more.
The film begins with some credits, details if the cast and crew then the title of this film appears on the centre of the screen in large, bold, futuristic font, whilst this information is appearing on screen there is a diagetic sound if clocks ticking, the first shot of the actual film is a close up of a clock and then there is a reverse zoom and the camera is tracking to reveal loads more clocks within the same room, all different types but all reading the same time, this is very unusual, it makes you wonder why there are so many clocks within the room and who the clocks belong to, it makes you want to carry on watching because it is so unusual you want to find out more about it. The camera carries on tracking and takes the focus off of the clocks and onto two newspaper articles that are framed on the wall, the main headlines of these are ‘Brown mansion destroyed’ and ‘Brown estate sold to developers – bankrupt inventor sells’ this reveals a bit more to the viewer without making it too obvious. The camera then tracks some more to reveal some framed photographs of some famous inventors and you then see a bed with rubbish on it and around, all of this gives clues out to the viewer to what kind of person lives here, the diagetic sound of the clocks ticking carries on throughout the whole of this sequence.
The radio next to the bed that has been programmed to come on does as if it was an alarm to wake somebody up, but we have established that there is nobody there to wake up, the person talking on the radio reveals what year we are in, which is in fact 1985, then the television comes on and it is the news that is showing, there is a main headline about plutonium has been stolen, we assume that this is some vital information because otherwise they would not have bothered to tell us it.
The camera then tracks to show a close up of an invention that makes coffee, toast and feeds the dog, the camera tracks to show all of this as it is happening and at the end shows a close up of a dog’s bowl that has the name Einstein on the front.
The front door then opens and it is not until 2minutes 50seconds that the first piece of dialogue is said, a male character says “hey doc?” not much of this character is revealed as you only see the characters lower legs from the knee down, we can assume that the character is a male in his teens because he is carrying a skateboard and a school bag and he is wearing Nike trainers. We see the character walking around the house but still we only see the characters lower half of the legs, it is not until 4minutes into the film that the characters face is eventually revealed, who is one of the main characters in the film, Marty McFly who is played by Michael J. Fox.
The opening of this film does not reveal too much about the film which makes the character want to carry on watching to find out what the plot is about. You do not know much about the characters within the film and you still do not find out who the house belongs to. The unusualness of the opening sequence is what makes you want to watch more.