Purpose of a film opening- Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth

In the spanish film Pan's Labyrinth, visionary director Guillermo del Toro (also director of Hellboy, Blade II, and The Devil's Backbone) used several different techniques in his film opening to send a message to the audience about what his film does. 

The first scene the audience see is the titles, presenting the film company name and any other relevant titles to the audience, in the background is a diagetic sound of what sound's like a female breathing heavily- in addition to this, the diagetic sound of humming of a female also plays with this. After the scene cuts to a screen with information of the date of when it's set, in this case Spain 1944, after a black screen shows the text of a short description of what is happening at the time and gives a brief description about what the story is about.

Differently, the audience then see the first shot of what the audience will believe to be the main character, lying on the ground the camera shoots a close up of a young girl with blood on her hand and running upwards back into her nose. Possibly suggesting to the audience that the film is going back in time. Zooming into a extreme close up of her eye, the diagetic voice over sound of a man begins to speak and continue to talk about the story.

The camera then cuts to a extreme long shot of what is told to the audience to be a underground cave- here the audience follow the camera as it moves upwards, downwards and side ways showing a person running upwards. As she runs up, the non-diagetic sound of string instruments begin to play, suggesting that something good is happening or that she is heading towards freedom. Once outside the camera shoots a moving close up of skulls lying on the round- suggesting to the audience that there is death and possible violence in the film. After it cuts to a crane shot of cars driving towards a castle, in a very rural destination. This tells the audience that the film is set in a country and open space area.

We first see some of the main characters when the shot cuts to a two-shot of a young girl Ofelia and her mother in the back seat of a moving car. Ofelia is shown reading a book as we see a close up of a fairy in her book, suggesting to the audience what kind of girl she is and also suggesting that the film may be based upon a fairytale.

Overall the function of a film opening in this film is to set a theme. Although this opening is slightly vague, it sets the destination, main characters, story of the past and also dates. This is useful to the audience as it allows them to have a idea of what is happening. As the story is set through a voice-over, the audience are able to picture what life may had been like in that time and can apply the characters and setting to this description of Spain in 1944. The long shot's of scenes also allow the audience to picture what type of area the film is being shot in.