Openings, Tone

S1 E1: With examples from 1943 to 2013, from China to Iran, Australia to Finland, we look at how to open a film: from mysterious, direct, floating, foreboding to plunging straight in. All are instructive in how to create an immediate world. Learning from example. What’s the tone of a film - not its story or theme, but what its world feels like? Back to Hollywood and Director Dorothy Arzner with MERRILY WE GO TO HELL AND and its glamorous amorous mood setting the - tone. This chapter looks at the myriad of ways in which directors set the tone of their films: delight, anger, poetic, double tone, moral seriousness, caring, edgy, violence.