Taken 2008 (Directed by Pierre Morel)

The opening sequence of Taken has a home video of a little girls birthday. She opens a present and then blows out the candle. She is very happy at this point. Once the girl had blown out the candles, the camera cuts to Liam Neeson's character Bryan Mills. This indicates to the audience that he was having the dream and so the girl in the home video whose birthday it was is his daughter. A clever technique I think that Pierre Morel uses is as the video comes to an end, we see flashes of white in the frame. This could indicate that Bryan Mills was waking up. Having this as an opening sequence tells you a lot about the character Bryan Mills. The audience can identify he is going to be a main character, we also can tell that he cares a grate deal about his daughter and finally the audience can identify that the girl is his daughter.

This opening sequence is very unusual and unique, however, this is not the best part of this film. In the film, characters continuously ask what Bryan Mills job is. This then leads to the story about Bryan Mills daughter (Kim played by Maggie Grace) getting kidnapped in France. She is on the phone with her father and she sees her best friend getting kidnapped and so asks her father for. Bryan tells her what to do and his final instruction was to hide under the bed. Kim replied and said now what. Bryan replied with

'The next part is important, they will take you.' This quote arises many questions to the audience as how does Bryan know this is going to happen. This also creates a lot suspense for the audience as they are expecting her to get taken straight away but there is a little dialogue before she actually gets taken.

This is one of the most tense and exhilarating moments of the film and this is the perfect set up to what follows in the film.

These two ideas presented by Pierre Morel I find to very good and very interesting. I hope my group are able to put these ideas in our own opening sequence as this will really get the interest of other viewers.