Friday 26th Septemeber

Blue Velvet opening scene

Blue Velvet is about a man who lives in a town called 'Lumberton' which is a typical American town. Or is it? The city/town is a nice, quite, peaceful town in which nothing bad happens until a young man finds a human ear by a shed in a near by field. He takes it to a detective who confirms it is indeed a human ear and gets a team together to go and search the area. The film is based on finding the man who found the ear deciding to solve the case and hunt down the murderer even though he has no experience at all. 

At the start of the opening scene we are shown slow motion shots of some flowers, red roses which could represent love and warmth and yellow tulips which portrays the idea of happiness. In the flower shots it also shows the lovely clear blue sunny sky which just makes the town look nice, peaceful and safe. We are then show a slow motion shot of a fireman standing on the edge of a step on a typical, red, old fashioned firetruck waving to members of the town. This portrays the idea of safety again and makes you think that nothing bad really happens in this town. Again another sign of safety is shown as we see a lollypop lady guiding children across the road. This is all very ironic due to the fact that someone has been murdered and someone has only just found an ear to someone who must have gone missing yet no one seemed to have noticed. This town is supposed to be safe, so people think but clearly it is not.

Not long after we see an old man have an accident as he drops to the floor due to something wrong with his neck, it seemed he had health issues. We have just been shown calming, wonderful, peaceful shots of nature and safe scenes and now we are seeing a man pass out in the garden whilst watering plants... This shows danger but nothing was suspicious about it as the man had health issues and doesn't actually die as in the film he is shown at the hospital recovering. There was nothing suspicous about the elder mans death which still doesn't make us think this town has a dark side to it. Pathetic fallacy is used as it is lovely and sunny but then the man has an attack, this could of been used to engage the audience. On the other hand it still shows that there could be something darker about the town and we just haven't seen it yet. After the man drops to the floor graphics are used to show the camera zooming into the ground which leaves us looking at a swarm of cockroaches crawling all over eachother. All we can hear is the sound of the cockroaches crawling and rumbling noises, this has been used to minipulate the audience and to also show that there IS a darker side of the town as beatles are often seen as 'creepy crawlys' and horrible.