Analysing film opening credits: Walking dead - Season 3

Setting: The opening credits of Walking dead symbolise that the film evolves around survival of the characters and escaping the area. The lonliness of the city shown in the credits make the audience want to watch further as they begin to wonder why the streets have been abandoned. The picture on the left shows that the city has evacuated and the whole road is blocked up with empty cars in which people had abandoned to escape the zombie like characters.

Props: A couple of seconds into the video you can see a piece of newspaper which is blown away by the wind, and underneath it is a police badge. This would seem frightening to the audience as the police would normally succeed in taking power in a situation, and seeing the badge left on the floor can suggest that they have failed and there is something much more powerful which is trying to take control of the city/area. This emphasises that the entire popultaion might of evacuated from this "new power" which is trying to take control by fighting the police off. Also, there are bullet cases on a rock and we can infer that there has been a case of murder or attack as the bullet cases and the police badge interlink as this shows the police tried to fight the other species off with a 9mm pistol. The arrows are also seen as a weapon of harm, and in this case it might have been used incorrectly to try and injure a person, or maybe an unknown species.

Effects: A zoom lense is used to make one specific item important in the scene/shot. In this case, the police badge, the watch and the arrows in the tree are focused on which means you can suggest that the police are involved in this programme. The same applies for most of the objects throughout the opening credits. The time of the day is editied so that it going fast throughout the day, which shows that there is no activity happening during the day. When the time is sped up, it shows a variety of houses and areas which seem empty and deserted after this devastating outbreak, and this creates emotion as when the audience are watching this programme, they might wonder how it feels to be isolated or in a situation where you are still alive in the city and everyone else has vanished.

Lighting: In this particular opening, you can see that it is mostly high key lighting as you can clearly see that there is no sign of a life form anywhere close, which enforces the feeling of emptiness. When parts of the opening credits are sped up, the shots are partly disorientated which could suggest that if you were looking at a city from this perspective, you would be confused about how you would be able to survive/cope in an environment like this.