Give an account of how the opening titles signal genre and Italianicity. Use present tense.
Use screenshots to illustrate what you observed.
Start with a descriptive sentence such as " In class today I watched and analysed the opening title sequence of a television drama."
ANALYSING FILM OPENINGS: ZEN
Zen (BBC1 2011 Sunday evenings) is an excellent example of a crime/detective drama series whose opening efficiently establishes its genre, locations, themes and tone right from the start.
The crime genre is established through the iconography such as the repeated firearms and depictions of the Questura, the police headquarters.
Italianicity is conveyed through repeated washing of the screen with the colours of the Italian flag: red, white, green. Remember Barthes's analysis of semiotic codes in the Panzani advertisement?
Location is rapidly established through depictions of iconic Roman buildings such as the dome of St Peter's towering over the Vatican.
Fiat Cinquecento cars are stacked up in repeated motifs with connotations of the crowded city streets of Rome; this sequence echoes similar ones such as those showing the guns. The colour codes of the Italian flag again connote Italy.
Black vertical lines are repeatedly used to separate the blocks of colour and to narrow the frame through which we see the characters who are introduced. This creates a sense of spying or voyeurism as if we were seeing what is normally restricted or kept secret.
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