Opening Sequence Analysis

The Day After Tomorrow

The film starts with a black screen and slick silver titles. There is slow, sad music playing (non-diegetic). Then there is a high angle shot going over the sea moving very quickly with the title “the day after tomorrow” at the bottom of the screen which is reflected in the sea. We then see some floating bits of ice while more titles are appearing at the bottom of the scene. More unhappy music begins to play. We then see an ice shelf as the camera moves towards it. We then realise that all the floating ice was once part of the ice shelf. The camera then moves from the high angle shot to a normal shot and continues to surface the ice shelf. It almost feels like the camera is a bird, majestically flying around the ice shelf, possibly this is to give the film a natural feel. We then see a small camp and can suddenly hear the howling of the wind as the camera moves closer. We then immediately see an extreme close up of the US flag blowing in the wind as the words “Larsden B ice shelf, Antartica” appear at the bottom of the screen. The camera then floats down to ground level to reveal people. The two people are stood around a drill and one person is teaching the other how to use it. The “teacher” asks him how he feels and the other man says “yeh I think I’ve got the hang of it”. The teacher replies with “the boss would chew my ass off if these cords get messed up. At this point, we know something bad is going to happen. We then see a close up of the teacher picking up a tube. The music has just started to stop. The teacher then walks into a cabin where we meet a third man looking at something under a microscope. This third man says “you let Jason operate the drill?” we definitely know something bad will happen. We then see a closeup of the drill and the man operating it. These shots are quickly followed by a closeup of a crack in the ice that is quickly spreading towards camp. The sound of the cracking gets louder and some deep trumpet music plays. We later see that the ice has split the camp in two and Jason (the drill operator is caught in the middle. The other two men rush to him and save him while the drill and ice he was stood on breakaway. We then see the man who was previously looking under a microscope jumping across the huge gap in the ice. He picks up more of the tubes like the ones we saw earlier. He then jumps back across the crack and makes it to the other side, only to slip down and be left hanging off with one hand. The other two men rush over to save him. He is clearly a main character. The camera then pans out to show a longshot of the whole ice shelf splitting in half.

http://www.novamov.com/video/4a71c96636757