The Shawshank Redemption opening sequence analysis

The opening scene of the drama "The Shawshank Redemption" starts with a clip of men talking between themselves, showing no suspense or action, however creating interest from the audience about these characters and what they are like, this is followed by a voice-over stating that one of the men was a conman. This develops the character some more and shows that the film is of a "drama" genre as it contains nothing but an introduction to one of the main characters, and characters are generally the main focus of films of a drama genre.

The sound in this scene is very melancholy and slow. The audience will immediately react with a gloomy emotion, it tells the audience that the film will be a sad one. There is a sound bridge running over all the shots in the sequence, showing that there is a link between them all, and that link is the fact that all the scenes are showing the character "Andy" taken into prison, this could have a sad reaction from the audience, although the mis-en-scene of cheering and the prisoners excited juxtaposes with this emotion, this makes the audience confused as to what is happening in the sequence. The melancholy music is from Andy's point of view which is opposite to the emotions felt by the prisoners.

The voice-over sounds as if it is coming from the future, and he is speaking as if looking back on the events, for example the voice is coming from the character "Red" who in the scene has not yet met Andy, however he speaks of him as if he has met him before, e.g. with the "he'd been vice-president of a large portland bank", and all the voice-over in the past tense, this could be a technique we could use in our opening sequence.

The cinematography contains establishing shots of the area and the characters, for example, between seconds 0:50 and 1:30 it uses crane and aerial shots of the prison which the whole film is set in, and near to the beginning it uses mid close-ups of main characters, also after the aerial shots it contains close ups of Andy, while the voice-over speaks about him. This is a typical technique for the openings of movies which we could also use for our opening sequence.