Sucker Punch Introduction - Notes/Analysis

Sucker Punch Introduction - Notes/Analysis

Genre: Action/Adventure/Fantasy

Narrative: What I pickup from this is that the 2 daughters’ father had something to do with their mothers death. What gives this away is the shot/frame at 1:18. The relationship then continues to deteriorate with the father. He also gets extremely angry because the mother left most, if not everything of hers to her daughters and not her husband (scene at 1:36) so he then turns that onto them and wants to kill them/get rid of them somehow.

Camera Shots/Movement:

The very first shot of the scene is a crane/jib shot over the audience of a theatre and around onto the main character of the film. I think this could be for many different reasons. One being that your imagination is endless and anything is possible. All you see is a set of one of the daughter’s bedroom and through that door to the right is the key to what happens next/throughout the story.

(1:11) – A mid track in shot of both daughters falling on their knees at the end of the bed where their mothers body lay from under the bad – I feel like the director wanted to express the fact that both daughters at that specific point were in a helpless state and potentially felt like their whole world was coming to an end. People on their knees/falling to their knees is usually conveyed as ‘weakness’ or being weak, adding a tracking shot into that too expresses the fact to the audience of what really is going on, like their world is closing in around them.

(1:40) – A track/pan shot - Here you see a gun revealed as the father picks up a blade of some sort to open the will. This shot is held for slightly longer that is necessarily needs to be, I think there is a reason for this tough – I think that the director purposely did this to express how potentially strong the father is in comparison to his daughters. It could also mean that he is a bad person because guns are usually associated with criminals etc...

(2:40) Zoom shot/Effects – this shot particularly caught my attention because of how interesting and unique it actually is. The eye trough the keyhole could mean ‘no escape’ but as it develops even more, it starts to go deep into her eye and fade into a shot of the father going into the bedroom. I’m not sure if the director chose it for this reason but I see it as going inside this girl’s head/imagination. Like it was all a dream almost.

Editing: I’m not too sure what to say in terms of editing, the only things I noticed were right at the beginning and at 4:39 – 5:12. And that was transition. In both shots/scenes it goes from either real life to real life in a different scenario or real-life to CGI/effects.  At the beginning for example, the shot was of a set, but it the shot went over the audience and somewhere faded into the actual room. And at the end, it went from a mid to close-up of the daughters face to a wide of a very interesting looking castle/house/mansion. It looks like CGI but may have been heavily colour-graded.

Sound: The whole duration of the opening scene was full of various sound effect and had one backing track. It all seems quite fantasy and out of this world. Like it isn’t quite clear what’s happening. Like something wants to come out and know what it wants to say but it just somehow can’t. All a blur.

Some of the sound has definitely been enhanced too (1:49) is of the father throwing books off of his desk, the sound that is there has an echo on it, again, adding to the whole fantasy world.  At 4:01 the small screams of shock from the girl are very muffled and echoed, it is also quite faint and disturbing compared to the rest of the music. This could be conveyed as the situation being disturbing/distraught/horrifying for the older daughter.