Naked Gun: opening Scene

The naked Gun is a famous comedy movie which had a great success. The opening scene to the film should be looked at to see how they created humor to attract the audience within the first few minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaGLZEdYDGU



In the opening scene, the non diegetic sound is very dark and eary. This tells us that maybe something bad is going to happen. This is even more evident when the person at the hotdog counter and the man at the top of the stairs both look towards there guns. We then see a man reading a newspaper, who looks up at the clock to see what time it is. The music is still tense meaning that it is almost certain something bad is going to happen. We then see the man reading the newspaper loook towards a woman struggling to take her baby pram up the stairs. He then goes to help her with it when another woman with two prams is struggling to get them up the stairs. He then calls for the man at the hotdog counter to go help that woman. As that man helps the woman with two prams, another woman with a pram is having trouble taking her child down the stairs. Humor is created here because the audience is still thinking that there could be some gun shooting very soon, yet the three people are trying to be nice civilians and help out.



The next scene we see is of 5 men at the top of the stairs, who the audeince pressume are the "baddies". As they start walking down the stairs, the man reading the newspaper notices its the people. They both meet midway on the stair and then look at each other with close ups of their faces. Then the shooting happens in slow motion, showing the three people forget about the prams they were helping to carry. This creates humor because they were wanting to help the ladies with the prams and have now left them to go straight down the stairs where the babys could potentially be killed. We also see the man at the top of the stairs struggling to take his gun out from his leg. This creates humor because its not often you say the good people sturggle when doing something.

Next, we see One of the woman miming " My baby" as the pram goes down the stairs. We then see the hotdog counter man chace after the pram, with a lawn mower behind him and a guy with a rake in his hand. This creates humor because it is totally random to see a guy with a rake and a lawn mower coming down the stairs. Then all the focus goes onto the babies, while the shoot out is going on. Then the present and the pope appear at the top of the stairs. This creates humor because it comes from out of the blue and the reaction on the face of one of the good people is totally confused.

Nearing the end of the opening scene, the person reading thew newspaper runs out of bullets. They cut back to a shot of the baddies and then somehow he has ended up with a machine gun. This creates humor because in reality there is noway someone could find a gun in that shorter space of time. Then whilst this is happening, we can see in the background the hotdog guy saving all the babies. The last baby he saves he starts dancing and celebrating with and is about to throw it on the floor when a woman stops him. This creates humor because in reality you dont hold a young baby with one hand and you would most not likely want to throw it on the floor.
In the end this is all just a dream. This is a good example of a opening scene and we should look at this when we make our opening scene.