Blue Velvet Analysis

Media – Blue Velvet Opening Scene Analysis

The opening scene in Blue Velvet sets it out to be a happy, peaceful and safe community, with the stereotypical 1950’s America neighbourhood. There’s a number of things at the start that indicates that this is a safe neighbourhood as happy children are crossing the roads helped by a lollipop lady, a fireman is driving by with his dog on the truck with not much urgency at all.

Sound

At the start of the extract the music is very jolly, happy and upbeat which makes you want to sing along with it as it’s also catchy. This sets the opening out to be along those lines of a happy start. However when the hose pipe gets caught in the buses and starts to get tangled the happy music dims down a little bit making it seem like something dramatic is about to happen. When the man yanks the hose he has some sort of stroke or heart attack and once he drops to the floor we hear some kind of beetle noise which may be indicating that everything is not all happy and jolly as it seems to be and that there’s more to it in the underground or if you watch further in to the film you see the bigger picture.

Editing

As far as the editing goes in this extract they do a good job of creating suspense and tension leading up to when the man drops down to the floor, they do this by the repetition of zooming into the hose and back out to the man. The creator of the film may have done this to entice you in and draw your attention to the film in the early stages. Also the use of the dissolve transitions between each scene gives a feel of the days going by and shows that the community is a nice and safe place to be in each day. 

Use of Camera

There’s quite a range of camera shots used in the extract, there’s a few pan shots which enables the camera to get the whole of the scene into the shot this works well with the flowers as they also have the white picket fences in the background which is a key symbol of 1950’s America. Also the camera is used well when the woman is watching TV as the camera shows her watching the programme and then straight after it goes into a POV (Point of View) shot which enables the audience to see what the character sees. The creator may have decided to include this scene into the opener as it may be some sort of hint to what’s going on further down the line into the film.

Misenscene

At the start of the extract it displays the name which is ‘Blue Velvet’ and the director does something clever by having Blue Velvet curtains behind the writing of the title and when the films about to start the curtains unveil and it goes into a similar colour blue of the sky which sets the opening scene. Also when we see the roses with the white picket fences and the blue sky the audience automatically think of a happy community/environment which also links in with the American flag colours (red, white and blue). Another shot were the director puts the message across of a good community is where the little kids are able to cross the road after school on their own just with the lollipop woman.