Analysis: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Opening

Sadly I was unable to find a copy of this opening sequence on YouTube. If one becomes available, I will add it to this Blog post.

Genre:

There are a variety of features in the trailer which aid the viewer in identifying the genre of the film:

• Dark Lighting creates a mysterious atmosphere, hiding a majority of the surrounding objects/locations and generally obscuring the viewer's perception of the world they are viewing. Mystery is a feature of Thrillers.
• Enigma: Why did the man cry about the plant? Who is he? What relevance does the plant have? Who is the hooded person that we follow? Why is a business meeting relevant to all this? Unanswered questions until later on in the film, which is generally something a Thriller would do.
• Violent connotations of a knife and it being used to cut string on a parcel may be a clue to what happens later on in the film. Violence (specifically with blades like these) is another feature of Thrillers.
• The man shows Fear and Caution when operating the knife, maybe like the viewers may feel later on the film. People fear for the safety of characters in Thrillers, so the man's fearful actions with the blade are an indication to this.

Titles:

• The titles are Sans-Serif, but are in an unusual font otherwise, possibly unique to the film. The unusualness of the font presents the viewer with an unfamiliarity with what they are viewing. 
• The text overlays the video footage, so that the sequence can progress without waiting for the text. Although the text isn't the main focus of the shots, it is still highly noticeable due to it's on-screen juxtaposition. 

Editing:

• The titles fade in and out in time with the flow of the musical notations, which is both artistically and aesthetically pleasing, and also doesn't interrupt with the overall flow of the sequence.
• Generally, the shot changes through this sequence are very swift, but when the man with the plant displays sadness, the pace of shot interchanging slows down dramatically. This emphasises his emotion - when we are sad, everything seems to grind to a halt.
• Also, in some places, the opening uses a technique where the audio of the next shot overlaps the previous shot for about 1/2 seconds. I'm not sure if this technique has a name, but I can say that it makes the flow of the sequence seem a lot more natural, and also gives us a slight hint to what is coming next for us in the film.