Blade Runner

Blade runners opening sequence starts with a extreme wide shot or an establishing shot, which shows you the full view of this wasteland. The wasteland is filled with darkness, fire, smoke, there are explosions, huge bolts of lightning and their is no sky visible in the shot which shows a sense of fantasy. This makes us question what has gone wrong on earth for this new dark polluted wasteland to have formed. The wasteland resembles hell, a sort of dystopia, the imperfect world, full of darkness, sadness and danger.

The constant moving camera viewing the city gives us a sense of space, were being slowly introduced into this world and being drawn towards a pyramid which towers over the rest of the city.  This pyramid is seen as the centre of power as everything is drawn towards it, as you can see the cars all moving in towards it in the Establishing shot. The pyramid also contains the only blue lights, which give a cool feeling of safety, like people from the pyramid are safe and immune to the rest of the mystery of the city. The pyramids power and size is emphasised to symbolise a power and an authority.

The scene cuts to a extreme close up of a human eye. A reflection of the city is shown in the eye to symbolise the person taking in this world. This ties to emotion, it makes the audience question what is this person feeling when they take in this world, do they feel anger, regret, sadness, empathy, or do they feel happiness, a feeling that this is what they have always dreamt of. The eye makes you question the identity of this person, who are they? The flames being reflected in the eye makes us question is this person dangerous, they are looking out at the city and not the pyramid which makes you think this person is from or is situated with the pyramid which means they may have authority. This first questioning of the identity outlines the theme for the rest of the film, which is questioning who is real and this is all shown through the eyes. 'the eyes are the windows to the soul'