Research into Title Sequences - Shutter Island

Research into Title Sequences

This is the title sequence for the psychological thriller 'Shutter Island'. I chose this title sequence to look into as it has the narrative to it that we would like to have in our film.

The narrative of the title sequence is mixed up, yet quite revealing at the same time. The fact that there are certain iconic props used in certain clips in the title sequence mean that it suggests things to the audience about the film and create assumptions about the film that prepare an audience for what is to come in the film.

The shot to the left shows a lot of qualities that set the film in the genre of a psychological thriller. The metal gates, and particularly the focus on the gates with the lack of lighting on the rest of this particular room, present the tone of isolation and entrapment much like Kyle will be experiencing. Also the rain in the shot uses the feature of pathetic fallacy as the rain creates a dreary, lifeless feeling to the film already.


 The fact that the shot to the right is the first proper shot we get of an actual human quality makes the film seem a lot more realistic as the shots prior to this make the sequence surreal in a more pessimistic way as they seem like a nightmare sequence. 
The fact that the shots now seem more realistic is even more thrilling as making something seem more real is just about 'making a nightmare, a reality'.

A gun is used as a prop in this shot. This creates a dangerous tone to the title sequence which is particularly thrilling to an audience member. Although, the fact that the gun is under someones foot can be taken in 2 ways. Either the one thing that someone could be used as protection has been taken by someone else so their way of protection has been taken so they're helpless. The other way is that someone could have been threatening a protagonist with a gun and they have subsided the gun from the threat.