As a filmmaker a question, I think about a lot is how [do] you begin a movie?
There's the popular quote from Martin scorsese that you've probably heard before
Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame, and what's out?
basically a filmmaker makes choices in every moment of what to show the [audience] and what not to
So what do you show them first with an infinite number of possibilities what first impression?
Do you want to make I'm somewhat partial to what I'm going [to] call the mission statement opening?
You know the one that's like a short sequence usually about five minutes long that
Grabs the audience's attention and announces exactly what the movie is going to be so think of trainspotting
Jaws
Goodfellas or scream each of these opening scenes work as miniature versions of the film's that follow
One of my favorite examples of this type of opening is from the Matrix
Written and directed by Lana and Lily [Wachowski]
Almost like a James bond movie it begins with a cold open action sequence before the real story starts
But unlike a bond movie where the opening is usually just some fun action unrelated to the main story the Matrix is more ambitious
it's common practice for
Sci-Fi films that require a lot of world-building [to] begin with some sort of opening monologue or texts to bring us up to speed
You've seen this in Star Wars blade Runner Dune dark City the road warrior Serenity Oblivion Pacific rim to her and plenty more
the Matrix takes the opposite approach
Instead of explaining its mythology and history to us up front it treats them as a mystery that slowly revealed in the film's first half
The opening scene unfolds like a puzzle revealing new elements and clues and preparing us for what's to come for most of us
It's hard to imagine a [time] [when] we weren't intimately familiar with
Every aspect of the Matrix but try to forget what you [know] and look at this sequence with fresh eyes
I want to take a close look at what makes this such an effective opening the first voices we hear are two unnamed people speaking
cryptically like watching
mentioning someone who might be
the one that they're watching him and are going to kill him then as the camera moves through a bunch of computer code into a
Tangible world the first thing we actually see is this guy a police officer and the first real character
We meet is the lieutenant who makes the goofy [juris] my diction joke you give me that juris my diction crap
He's an archetypal older police officer experienced kind of casually sexist
I think we're Gonna Handle one little girl
But compared to the weird super serious agents who wear sunglasses in the middle of the night?
We like him by 1999
Decades of movies and TV had taught us that cops were generally the good guys so even if we don't know what's happening
[we] assume we're on their side the cops are all here to arrest this weirdly dressed
Pale woman who we can infer was probably one of the people on [that] phone call
And the way the first few minutes are coded all signs point to her being a bad guy
Especially when we hear this line, [oh] lieutenant your men are already dead
So wait this woman is about to murder a bunch of cops just doing their jobs
Yep
and
Yet right away. We start rooting for her not because of anything she does
But because of a really simple thing we see her face
While the cops are shown mostly in darkness and in quick shots trinity gets a big well-lit [close-up] and because of how were wired
Looking at her face and into her eyes
Pretty eyes we can't help but empathize with her also. [it] has to be said [that] even if she's murdering cops
This is cool as hell
But the most interesting thing about this opening is the way it employs different styles and genres
the whole scene exists in the visual landscape of classic noir
Subconsciously setting us up for the murky morality of the scene instead of the cops being the protagonists
It's trinity the one who murders them all in cold blood while many of the movies major
Inspirations are present here like the hong kong action films of [John] woo with Superhero comics and anime most of the visual
References Lean in a very specific direction there's the general visual style of late
1940s noir films particularly those with a heavy influence of German expressionism
[with] the chiaroscuro lighting
Straight vertical Lines and
Exaggerated shadows this split diopter shot is straight out of a brian de palma film and of course this part is a direct riff on
Hitchcock's Vertigo
Even with it's crazy visual effects and [Trinity's] shiny leather rave club outfit this whole scene is taking place within the world of a dark
Psychological thriller we don't realize it because we're caught up in the action, but the movie is priming us for the mystery
That's going to drive the first act of the story the look of the agents does this as well
[they're] clearly modeled on the classic men and black archetype
We associate these types of guys with Shadowy government agency is covering up Alien arrivals
So their presence adds overtones of conspiracies and Paranoia as well as hinting at the Sci-Fi
elements that will arrive later like Star Wars 20 years earlier
we see styles and tropes we recognize but reconfigured and combined in a way to create something brand new on a
Narrative level of this scene tells a self-contained story. We meet trinity. She's chaste
She escapes
But as we watch a growing list of questions forms in our mind were these people watching and planning to kill who is trinity?
Why are they trying to arrest her how does she have superpowers who is morpheus who are these agents?
How do they have superpowers how did she escape in the phone booth?
[oh], and uh what is the Matrix anyway?
So by the end of the scene at [six] minutes and [thirty] seconds into the movie we have pretty much no idea
What's actually going on but we're hooked and we've got a whole [bunch] of questions
[we] want answers to immediately after the seen the movie introduces us to neo our point of view character
And now we're more invested in his story because he's actively trying to find answers to the exact same questions that we have
The great trick of this scene is that without telling the audience anything concrete about the story it announces
Exactly what the movie is going to be like it gives a taste of the style and tone and the insane action
Raises questions that will all be answered and shows us something that at that point
We'd never seen before if the point of an opening scene is to get the audience's attention
Then I think this is [a] success at the end of the scene the agents
Have a few lines that set up what's going to happen next and then we dive into this cool trends
That I already made a video about so I'm just going to end this here
Hey guys, thank you for watching as you can see due to huge demand
[I] made the second Matrix video Si [I] could honestly talk about this movie forever
Usually there's just one video SI per month
But for this month or so due to some scheduling stuff and me being out of town a bunch to leave a bit more nonfiction
Content than usual, and then this summer expect way more
action-Packed narrative shorts including
Finally the winning entry for the 50,000 subscriber contest which seems like an eternity ago, because [we're] at
80,000 now so anyway
If you're digging these videos and you want to support us so we can keep on [making] them bigger and cooler than ever is check
Out the patreon if you want to get updates on what we're working on and yell mean things me on the internet
Please don't I check out the social media links. I'm gonna go to sleep now, and I'll see you next Wednesday