Opening Scores in Cinema

The concern how to begin an artistic work always brings up a perpetual anxiety for the artist and his or her audience as well. The artist tends to absorb the audience from the very first moments to be able to affect him thoroughly in the later sections. The audience is ready to keep distance from the world of reality and therefore has more passion for perception.Cinema - as an art – is not an exception. One can observe works along the history of cinema which have inspired the passion of the audience with their enticing and charming openings. The most important principle in the opening score is to impart the beginning of the story to the audience. This has always been under consideration of the filmmakers in the history of cinema. Even though they did not take deep consideration to this at first, the filmmakers and studios started to understand the important and essential role of the opening score and opening scores, through the creativity and innovation of the filmmakers, turned into one of the basis of film structure. Meantime; the studios asked for some frameworks and patterns to be observed for cinematic productions as well. The role of music in this inspiration and drawing attention is undeniable. The opening score can be too effective in imparting the time, location, introducing the characters, style, genre, atmosphere acceptability and inspiring the senses of the audience as well.Opening score consist of the principles of the film script, directing, cinematography and music, each of them must form a special design for the opening score to impart the sense of commencement in the audience and draw his attention and lead him into the structure of the film to follow the story coming next. The viewer’s four main questions about the location, time, character and subject of the story make the artist to answer them. These questions and their answers are in fact cinematic stratagem which are employed through shooting script with the usage of the rules like distance of framing, gradual entrance from the outer space to the inner space and through film script in the form of nondiegetic sound as main character’s voice and through music the usage of orchestra and choosing instruments in connection with the time and location of the story.The usage of commencing overture forms, as patterns and specific rules for the opening scores which were employed in the studio systems in the classic era of cinema, are now employed with vast alterations and changes in the today cinema. This paper is an attempt to case study and analyzes different films and their opening scores through different cinematic genres. Vast variety of the opening scores of the films in the melodrama genre and the variety in this very genre need an independent discussion in an independent research. Therefore, this investigation in opening scores in confined to the genres: noir, war, epic, western and musical.