Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet

The music at the start sounds like violins and is quite calm to begin with but then gets louder. This could represent what will happen throughout the film and how it will progress and something drastic will occur. The first show we see is a tilt shot that reveals a bright blue sky, white picket fence and red roses. It look like a scene from a Disney movie, the idea of a perfect setting is shown. The blue sky can show pathetic phalacy of how everything is perfect and foreshadows a feeling to the viewer that as the film goes on, it will change and do the opposite. The red roses are very significant as the colour red symbolises danger, death and blood and the fact that they are roses could symbolise and portray imagery of loss or a funeral that will occur.

In the next scene, it is a sunny day which again is pathetic phalacy but there is a man who is watering his garden and he has a heart attack. This is very ironic because due to the fact that it shows it as being a sunny day and he has a heart attack, you would have expected it to be raining in the picture. There is an establishing shot and a pan of the America surroundings showing how perfect it is but then that happens which shocks the audience. When the bloke falls to the ground, there is an extreme close up of the rummaging through the grass. Next, we see hundreds of cockroaches which is showing the device of animal imagery for something that will happen throughout the film.

In the rest of the opening scene, there are loads of hints of it being portrayed as a very safe town like with the markings on the road for the children going to school and the lollypop lady helping them get to the other side. There is also an old fire engine that drives past too showing irony as the man is stood right on the edge of the truck as it is driving which isn't safe so the image contradicts itself. With all of these things saying to the audience that it is a very safe town, it makes the viewer feel even more on edge watching it because they know that something bad is about to happen and the film will be full of disaster and nothing more.