How does the opening ten minutes of Disneys Monsters Inc prepare the viewer for the rest of the film?

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Tom Williams                media coursework                               Mrs Garrard

How does the opening ten minutes of Disney’s “Monsters Inc” prepare the viewer for the rest of the film?

In the first 10 Minutes of “Monsters Inc” written by Disney Pixar, the action is really fun and active. It really makes you want to watch on. The sequence tells you everything about the structure and meaning of the film. The target audience is for everyone because there is a lot of adult humour and also some slapstick humour that children laugh at and really enjoy. This also suggests that the genre of the film is family and comedy. The first thing we hear and see is the exiting and joyful titles. After the titles we see the little boy in his bed and the closet door. When they focus on the door and turn away from it you know something is going to happen and it did, a big, scary monster appeared. You also get an introduction to the main characters, Mike, Sulley and Mr Waternoose. In the titles the target audience is retro and based for a parent’s childhood, but when the monsters get introduced you know it’s a child’s film because of all the bright colours. They all get about three minutes in the first ten minutes and it explains their personality in depth. The audience get a real feel for the rest of the motion picture.

In the titles and the soundtrack, Disney Pixar aim to get the target audience hooked onto the rest of the film. The target audience at this point is for the parents of children, because of the music. The music is jazz and jazz was popular in the 60’s and 70’s, so it makes the music retro. It reminds parents of the fun parts of their childhood. The first thing we see is a door, a door of a child’s bedroom closet. This links with the scene later on in the film when Sulley and Mike are chasing Randell and they go into the door warehouse. The second door seen shows one of the main aspects about the film because this time, when the door opens there is a big monster, the monster roars and this connects with the part later of the film where all the monsters are in the scaring room, when they are trying to the screams from children. When the monsters that are going from door to door in the titles start getting letters to make words for the production teams, it links with scenes where everything goes wrong for Sulley and Mike, because when the monsters put the letters down they sometimes get out of place. Also when the creatures finally make the words, lots of doors stack up around the words so that also links with the door warehouse. All the doors we see in the titles are colourful so it makes the film look really happy and cheerful. Throughout the titles we get to see monsters going from one closet and coming out of another. So that also links with the scene where they try and find the little girl Boo, who has been stolen by Randell. Sulley and Mike go through different doors and come out of another door to get closer to Boo. Right at the end of the titles they go to one final door and put the key hole onto it. When it opens it goes into a boy’s bedroom and starts the teaser for the film.

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At the start of the teaser there is a lot of tension in the room, the wind is howling, the clock is ticking and the owls are howling. This gives the audience a feeling of anticipation. This is a convention to the horror genre. As soon as you see the little boy get tucked into bed you know that the film isn’t going to be scary because it’s animated and not a lot of horror films are animated. In between the bit where they focus onto the door there is even more tension. When the door starts to open, ...

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