The purpose of the opening sequence in both the versions of “Romeo and Juliet” is to tell the audience what the film is about. It is like an introduction to the film. Since both these films were on general release, the audience did not know much about “Romeo and Juliet”, so directors had to set the scene so as to make the audience understand the films better.
The Franco Zeffirelli version’s opening sequence starts with an establishing shot. The camera pans over the rooftops of Verona. The scene is very misty and grey. There is a voice over as the camera pans, the voice over is saying a part of the prologue from the play. The establishing shot stops when the camera reaches the sun and then slowly zooms in on the sun. After zooming in, there is a cut shot. The next scene is set in the market square where the camera does a tracking shot of the horses and the wagon that enter the market square. The sound of the wagon and horses is the only diagetic sound in the whole opening sequence the rest is non diagetic. The music in the opening sequence is slow, old fashioned and romantic. The graphics in the opening sequence are there from the start when the title comes up and the director’s name and so on. The opening sequence does not cover the whole screen there is an orange border around it.
The Baz Lurhman version is in many ways different to Zeffirelli’s. The opening sequence starts with a television being switched on. The camera zooms in one the television as the channel is changed twice. As the camera is still slowly zooming in a newsreader appears on the television screen and says the whole of the prologue from the play whereas the Zeffirelli version only has a part of the prologue being said in the opening sequence. The camera stops zooming in when the television fills half of the screen. After the newsreader finishes reading the prologue the camera zooms in very quickly. After that there are a lot of jump cuts with clips of the building with the names of the Montague and the Capulet on them, there are close ups on the statue of Christ, there are a lot of “flash forwards” of what is going to happen in the film. There is a voice over during the jump cuts that says the prologue again and there are flashes of newspapers with headlines from the prologue. There are also bits of the prologue on blank screens flashing up really quickly. Unlike the Zeffirelli version the Lurhman version has the prologue in the opening sequence more than once. The Lurhman version introduces most of its characters in the opening sequence whereas Zeffirelli does not. Romeo, Juliet and the Capulet and Montague boys are not introduced in the opening sequence however half of Romeo’s face is shown in the opening sequence. There are a lot of shots and special effects in the Baz Lurhman version whereas the Zeffirelli version has a very few shots and hardly any special effects. The sounds in the Lurhman version are both diagetic and non diagetic while in the Zeffirelli there is only one diagetic sound. The music is also different the Lurhman version has fast, loud and dramatic and the Zeffirelli has slow and romantic music.
The effect of the Zeffirelli version on the audience is that it is old fashion and slow paced while the Lurhman version’s effect on the audience is that is a fast paced, dramatic and modern film. Both versions measure up to the audience’s expectation because of the prologue which is in poetic language. The audience expected a sunny place, both versions are set in a sunny place and both use poetic language. The Lurhman version does not measure up when it comes to the music the audience expect. They expect old fashioned and romantic music while the music in Lurhman’s version is loud and dramatic.
I liked the opening sequence of Baz Lurhman’s version because it was more modern and fast paced. The Zeffirelli version in my opinion looked very boring and slow paced. The Lurhman version was very bright and dramatic while the Zeffirelli’ version was dull and grey.