Film Openings - The Shining (Media Language) // Research

The opening scene begins with the Warner Bros. Pictures ident fading in from a black screen at 0:02, this lasts for 9 seconds and then fades out leaving a black screen.



Canted (oblique) framing used

This is almost immediately followed by an establishing, long shot of a lake with mountains either side of it. This shot moves forward tracking a small part of land in the middle of the lake. Canted framing is then used as the shot moves past the island, this creates an effect as if someone or something is flying over the scene.
 At 0:30 this shot dissolves into the next shot which is a long, aerial shot showing a winding road surrounded by tall trees. The lake is still shown on the left which tells the audience how we are still in the same surroundings as the shot before. In this shot you can see a car driving along the road establishing to the audience that it is likely one of the main characters is driving this car. The fact that the road is winding and the camera tracks the car makes the journey the car is taking even longer and drawn out.

There are many similar shots of the car on it's journey driving further and further along the road. These shots are particularly long and not edited together in a very fast way. When two shots fade into each other the fade is particularly slow possibly to emphasise time going by as if you look carefully you can see that continuity editing is not used as the car is suddenly in a different place. This again emphasises the long journey and how the person in the car is getting further and further away from people, adding an element of tension and worry to the audience as he is likely to be put in a difficult situation and not be able to be helped.

At 2:34 an extra long shot is shown, with the road directly in the middle. From this shot you can see that snow is on the mountain and this makes the audience realise how this person is driving higher up which again emphasises the situation of isolation this character is putting them self in.

At 2:44 it ends on a long shot of a building (possibly a hotel) which suggests to the audience that the film will be set here. The camera moves in slightly closer to the building to slower give the audience a better view of it and see how large and creepy it looks which again adds to the level of suspense as if it's that creepy from the outside it must be even worse on the inside.