Layer cake first of three film openings

layer cake is a action thriller that follows a theme of drugs and crime. Layer cake opens with a narrative voice over of the main charachter explaining the plot of the film.we see very little action in the opening, we see the main charachter walking out of a privite door in an estate agents and entering a nice car, we see close ups and medium shots so far showing the man wears very expensive suits reinforcing his buissness man look. the opening uses very few pans but uses many fast cuts as the man walks briskly around seeming as if he has got somewhere to be, this is expressed in the frequent cuts.

The next scene cut to Daniel Craig (the main charachter) walking down a path and into a house, he is still wearing a suit but now has a black gym bag in his hand. The voice over now explains that the man is not infact a straight buisness man but is a cocaine dealer run by his own rules on not to get caught. The narrative voice explains that he is still a buissness man but his commodity happens to be cocaine.

the next scene is of the Daniel Craig walking into a room with another man smoking and cutting a white powder assumed to be cocaine. The man is adding powder from a jar and mixing with the cocaine, here we are told a simple rule, dont get greedy, 4 kilos will split to 8 kilos, the narrative voice tells us the man is  a sharp buisness man that knows how to make money and how not to get caught.

props and mise en scene are very important in this opening, the clothing showing he is a buisnessman, the large amounts of cocaine and there are wads of cash in the black bag portraying the success of this man. within the opening very litte music is played to enphasise the narrative voice which gives us the hard hitting rules on how not to get caught. the camera angles used without have been used cleverly to show the importance of each prop, the cash and the cocaine have had close ups on, the close up on the jar of white powder shows he is mixing another powder with cocaine and the medium shots used to show the dress sence of each charachter.

at the end of this opening the camera semmingly zooms out from the table of cocaine and through a window to the outside of the house as the sound of sirens sound outside the house. this is a hard hitting opening that strongly explains the storyline but leaves the questions of what happens after the sirens come, is he successful, where does the money go, who is the cocaine for and how does the whole operation work.

the film has helped me get ideas for my own film opening and has given me the idea to use little to no charachter dialouge and to possibly use a voice over throughout the opening to give the serious mood the film needs.