Hartismere School

Est. 1451. An outstanding coeducational secondary school & sixth form college and England's first academy

Home Login

Opening Shots Tell Us Everything


Opening shots are underrated. I can almost guarantee that your favorite film has an opening shot that gives huge insight into the film's themes, character conflicts, or plot points. Let's look at four in-depth examples to see just how revealing opening shots are. https://www.patreon.com/nowyouseeit Movie openings shown, in order of their appearance: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Superbad (2007) Shaun of the Dead (2004) Jaws (1975) Whiplash (2014) Dan in Real Life (2007) The Big Lebowski (1998) The Matrix (1999) Silver Linings Playbook(2012) Little Miss Sunshine (2006) Silence of the Lambs (1991) Fargo (1996) Forrest Gump (1994) Raging Bull (1980)

Explore...

Carol (2015) Behind the Scenes - Part 2/2

Why all short films look the same

Top 10 Cinematographers of All Time

“Carol” Up Close

How to End a Movie

Academy Conversations: Carol

6 of the Best Shots of All Time

Meshes of the Afternoon - Maya Deren (1943)

10 Best Specific Sub-genres of All Time - Movie Lists

Understanding the Formatting of a Screenplay (and Why It All Matters)

New...

Hartismere Art & Photography Exhibition 2025

Pupil Premium Strategy Statement

5 Brilliant Moments in Patterns

Computer Science

Online safety newsletters

Film post-production explained

How Ofcom is helping children to be safer online – a guide for parents

Sixth Form Course Information

Discover...

Coursework Cinematography Aesthetics ZEN Screenplay GCE Film Studies YouTube Productions GCSE Ofcom Policy Carol Strategy Storyboarding Post-Production Wellbeing Safeguarding Festival Short Film Cinefix Careers Sixth Form Computer Science

Uh-oh - we were unable to load our website on your browser so we're showing you a plain HTML version.

We use many features found in modern browsers and regrettably yours seems incompatible.

However this legacy version contains (very, very nearly) all the same content. Each page is rendered on our server and doesn't rely on any browser features except the odd font. It doesn't even need Javascript or fancy CSS. It's like being in 1995!

Your browser is reporting itself to us as Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com). Please consider updating your browser to make the most of our website.

If you would like to try our proper website again - you can do so here...