Dawn of the dead and Four Lions (opening credits)

The opening credits in 'Dawn of the dead' is dragged out because they have made it last the song by Johnny Cash-The man comes around, which is 2 minutes 25 seconds.

During this they have a lot of credits which start important and gets less important, then the end few are important again. Each credit slithers of the screen like a liquid, suggesting a virus, which fits in well with the rest of the film. They range from 'Director' to 'Director of photography' showing they just added in as much as possible to build suspension, because in between the credits are little clips which are of zombies and viruses. This ellipse is used well to make you tense and ready for the the horror themed film.

Although some clips are real like the news reports of violence showing the reality, making the audience worried it could happen. Though the filmed by them clips are short and jumpy to scare the audience, one clip is off people abounding the white house which is generally connected to when they leave people really are in trouble.

So the opening is effective to set up the genre and the plot, however at the same time it builds suspense because of its long opening of scary clips.

Four Lions opening is completely different and still works, this has only four lines of credits. They only included the important credits like the title and producer. This is because they don't need to introduce the theme unlike Dawn of the dead. During the credits are played you see a mosque and they are playing a non-diegetic Pakistani music showing they want to be there and they're religious. Which the whole film is about so you get a slight understanding of the characters.

So the main differences are that 'Dawn of the dead' has a far longer opening credits and the song plays throughout. Also the credits are displayed on a black screen, where as in 'Four lions' they are displayed during the pictures. The most important difference is that there's only a few lines of credits unlike 'Dawn of the dead' which plays just to build suspense and finish the song.

I have learnt that the start of the film can be useful to give the audience a feel for the genre like Dawn of the dead did, however i also learnt that using only a couple with meaningful pictures works to set up the plot slightly. However for my opening i will have mine more similar to Dawn of the dead because i like how they made the audience feeling slightly tense just but some rioting quick shots.