A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO ASSEMBLING THE PERFECT TV CREAM FILM

3 - THE OPENING

So we've got the opening ident and we've got the animated titles (with appropriate oompah theme to boot). So, what's next? Well, since a film is basically a collection of scenes that when run together for an hour and a half or so hopefully make up to a cracking picture logic dictates that one of them has to come first. But what makes for that perfect opening scene?

The first scene of a film is easily the most important one. A crappy final scene may spoil the denouement of the entire piece, that is true, and it may ruin one's perception of the film as a whole. But during the period when you actually sit down and watch the thing for the first time it's perfectly possible to enjoy the rest of it beforehand and perhaps even prompt the viewer into spreading some Goldman-pleasing word-of-mouth in the process. So it really does matter to get that first impression in. But it's far from easy. We may have set up the credits already but the first scene doesn't necessarily have to take place after the credits. Some times it can before and other times it can even be during. It all depends really.

To be honest, we're not sure why it depends but it does. Like when you're watching an episode of a programme on telly that you really, really like and are then pleased as punch when another little bit comes along after the credits have rolled, the perception that you're getting an added extra little bit of stuff is a satisfying one. Funnily enough, on telly the best adept at this in recent times was in fact Alexei Sayle's STUFF the credits to which would roll seemingly about ten minutes in leaving the remainder of the programme to appear as a bonus with that enticing notion that it might just cut off any second.

A lot of great films have utilised the space behind the typeface to kick-off their action although in varying degrees of success. Brilliant Rodney Dangerfield vehicle BACK TO SCHOOL used a montage of touched-up photos to depict the rise of Dangerfield's character Thornton Melon from corner shop tailor to High Street mogul with his Tall and Fat stores. Actually, so cleverly are the inserts of Rodney's face onto the contemporary 50s and 60s photos that it actually works against it a bit since we only really noticed it was him after a couple of viewings. Not a good example then, really.

The animated title sequence as described last week can help a little but not much usually, at least not in the descriptive stakes. Bloody awful Nicolas Cage film (natch) HONEYMOON IN VEGAS worked in a protracted title cartoon that depicted an animated Nicolas Cage (and there's a first) in his plot-necessary Elvis gear fannying about on a wedding cake which is sort of relevant but hardly matters. It's not a great sequence but is at least better than the cobblers which follows. Hats off to title designer Wayne Fitzgerald for managing to introduce at least one watchable segment of the film there. Indeed, the legendary animated titles for EIGHTY DAYS AROUND THE WORLD mentioned last time may be great but they don't really tell you much about what's coming, unless they were instead appended to some Daliesque flock wallpaper-and-celebrity nightmare, so they don't match up on that score really. No, animated titles can't really be counted as the opening scene.

A better example of the behind-the-Letraset thing working comes in JAWS. As the stripped to the basics white credits appear with John Williams' music cello-ing away in the background what we get on screen are images of a camera sliding about underwater menacingly. Essentially, that's it. But you have to admit, that's the film pretty much in a nutshell. Not a bad effort. Better still, and of precisely the same composition but with a slightly different emphasis, is MURDER AHOY! Ron Goodwin's mental harpsichord and rhythm section theme blaring and tootling away in the back Margaret Rutherford heads across the main road in St Mary Mead to go through the motions of trying on and purchasing a seafaring outfit before going to attend a meeting at a naval trust. Having got the name of the film out of the way they may as well have shouted, "Miss Marple! On a boat!" across the screen. It'd have been cheaper but it wouldn't have been as much fun. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK on the other hand segues neatly from credits over the opening shots to the actual first scenes themselves crossing over into proper post-credits business, but we suspect that just means the credits are dead short and it doesn't count.

Taking another angle, the champion of the big pre-credits scene has always been the Bond films. The most bonkers one in our opinion is that for THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN where the Weasel Faced Gangster (who had already put in an appearance as Weasel Faced Gangster in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER) steps up to try and kill Christopher `Scaramanga' Lee in his strange ghost train maze before getting plugged. Well, at least it lets us see who actually is in possession of the titular piece. Favourite here at the fireplace is instead the lunatic bubbling mud shenanigans at the outset of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER which have little at all to do with the lairy mayhem to follow except to introduce the concept of multiple Blofelds, a conceit that in any case hardly factors in the rest of the film at all. The most spectacular ones tended to come with the onset of the mittel-period Moore years, especially the snowbound japes of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME complete with Union Jack branded motorised iceberg (and if we thought MI6 spent our money on things like that, we'd be happier about the secret services altogether). But Bond films have spun out of control recently anyway and are following a demented blueprint of their own, so we shall leave them to it.

Getting back to the source of our opening ident, STEPTOE AND SON RIDE AGAIN possess a lovely little pre-credits number in which the first establishing shot of an East End gasometer is followed swiftly by the gun-toting plastic cockerel festooned muzzle of Albert's WWI rifle aimed squarely at the `noisy bleeder' of a real cockerel screeching its lungs out across the yard. Not squarely enough though and he misses only to then shoot into the wall and bring down the ceiling on Son's frilly four-poster in the next room before the superb barrel organ version of Ron Grainer's never-bettered theme tune starts off. It's a terrific opening to the action but doesn't add much to the merriment to come, so we'll have to lave that aside with a sigh.

Basically then, we've eliminated the pre-credits scene as too non- descript (and more than a little pointless in the case of 007) and the animated title sequence doesn't get enough across either and has been included already anyway. Live action behind-the-credits paraphernalia is nice – not thrilling, but nice – but just doesn't do it for us; we want a proper first scene. Thankfully – for us all – we've got just the one.

And so we head back to BACK TO SCHOOL. How to set up the character and the tone of a film in thirty seconds (when you're usually desirable theme song is missing)? Here it is here. For those untutored souls amongst you who have yet to sample the delights of this Harold `Ghostbusters' Ramis gem, Thornton Melon owns Tall and Fat, stores for, well, you know. But then of course you don't really know until you first see it and you don't know what Melon's like either (leaving aside the slight and pretty unnecessary pre-credits sequence that's already passed unnoticed). Enter the great concept of Thornton appearing in his own adverts screened at the outset. "Hi, I'm Thornton Melon. Are you pleasantly plump? A little on the large side? A little hefty perhaps? Let's face it, are you fat? When you go the zoo do the elephants throw you peanuts? When you make love do you have to give directions? When you go jogging do you leave potholes? In a restaurant do you look at a menu and say `Okay'?" and so on. Cut then to Melon watching the ad in the back of his limo. Hardly half a minute in and we already know everything we need to know about Thornton Melon and *that's* a perfect opening scene.

Hey, guess what? We like this guy! Consider respect gotten.

"Doughty", that's the word for Dame Margs, afloat or landlubbing.

The inspiration for many an extreme sports idiot, but it was really exciting and original at the time. "I suppose nowadays he'd have a UKIP logo on it!"

You want wall-to-wall squalour? You've got it.