Film Openings - Hot Fuzz (Media Language) // Research

The first shot is an establishing, extra long shot of an empty police station with a man, the protagonist, walking towards the camera. After around 30 seconds this shot becomes a close up as he has walked closer to the camera. Following this is a montage of medium shots, close ups, extreme close ups, and long shots. These are all made more interesting by camera movements such as panning and tracking. For example at 0:33 there is a close up of the main characters feet walking, followed by medium shot of him still walking along which shows his uniform and the forceful way in which he walks makes the audience realise the power he has with that uniform. These two shots also show match on action.

The speed of the editing is very fast making it too much to give a detailed account of every single shot used. However, some quite interesting editing is used as at 0:47-0:48 for less than a second two clips from the same shot are laid over each other making the shot seem busier than it really is and giving the audience this impression of how there is so much going on in the main characters life.


Overlapping shots

The same thing happens at 1:42 when extreme close ups of him putting hand cuffs on people are shown. This makes him seem very powerful and successful as he's caught many criminals.

The opening ends on a close up of a Father Christmas stabbing a knife into the main character's hand. At 1:52 the action shot of the wound is stopped, by freeze-framing the video so it becomes a still image and then the image fades out. The way they've edited it to make the video stop just as he was being wounded and then stay on that picture for a bit makes the audience again see how much of a good police man he is and how he is very brave and will do anything for his job.