Differences Between Independent and Mainstream Film Openings

Film openings tend to be fairly short so it can be hard to establish between an independent and mainstream film opening because they would usually be of the same quality.

These are some examples of Mainstream film openings which I believe show the budget of the film to be quite high through their high quality.

Both of these film openings have a lot of post-production editing to create them to their standard. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo opening is very high definition with a lot of green screen work, animation and computer aided technology added to it. The Spider-Man 2 opening is animation and features a lot of iconography also. Mainstream institutions can afford to create film openings like these two whereas an independent company would have to focus all their attention on budgeting and making sure they can afford the equipment to film normally. 

The opening for This Is England shows clearly the difference in quality between mainstream and independent. Camera work is shaky and bad quality compared to the stunning effects in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. This Is England was created to have this effect but the opening features hardly any filming of the characters and editing of different English clips being pieced together, The lack of titles shows that the cast and crew weren't as large and the people involved with Spider-Man 2. 

Independent films will focus on a main character for the opening or a set of characters and the characters will be followed, like in the Donnie Darko film opening.

This independent film follows Donnie in the beginning and the title sequence doesn't involve any special effects or special equipment. This is the different to the mainstream films because the opening has an for them is an artistic approach to opening the film which rich institutions can afford. Donnie Darko is just one of many independent films which has a simple way of grabbing the audience in the first 5 minutes, this way is by creating a mystery about a character instantly and creating a question in each audience member that they will carry on watching to find out. For this film it would be "Why is he sleeping in the road?" and the audience would want to watch on to find out the answer to this.