La La Land opening analysis
The first thing the audience sees is the sky, the sun is at the
corner of the screen, giving the audience an idea of the time,
the camera is tilting, pointing up from a fixed base (the road)
that later on we see as the camera is also
tracking backwards towards the subject.
Here audience can hear and see all the cars listening to different types of music which then mix into one song as
the camera pans and dolls closer to the person singing, these are all diegetic sounds. It gets close enough to a mid-
shot to show her relaxed position. The color of her dress is yellow, normally representing youth, positive thoughts
and friendliness. The camera dolls backwards, showing a long shot of the person singing. As she sings the word
‘screen’ she throws her sunglasses in the car from the window, maybe connoting to the way she’s going
to pursue her dreams by breaking the screen.
The camera keeps dollying backwards and shows two men getting
down of their car and joining the song. The shirt of the two men
are blue and green, both being primary colors. More people keep
on joining her as the camera dolls back. The camera quickly pans
(with a hidden cut) showing what is in front of the girl, the colors
of the shirts are all bright colors and everyone is cheerful. As the
camera dolls back again, the audience can see a girl opening the
backdoor of a car, this may connote with helping others as it’s not
the only times it happens in the same car.
A landing of a backflip of one of the girls is synchronized with the drums of the song; it makes the song gain the
rhythm again. The camera follows people who are lead singers by panning
ad dollying towards them. There is an extreme close up of a lead singer, as the
dallying unexpectedly changes direction.
Then the camera shows a high angle, showing the audience the synchronized
movements of people on the car and around the street, as the camera does this, the
audience also notices the variety of bright colors of not only what the people are
wearing but also the cars.
As the blue track opens, the band starts playing, again synchronizing with the music,
but also giving an unrealistic look to the movie. Here the audience also sees
the amount of people that have joined the dance and the variety of different dances
from different people, maybe foreshadowing the dances that we are going to be seeing along in the movie.
The camera pans again (with a hidden cut again) to show a mid-shot of the girl again relaxing on top of a car, here
we can’t see any other people but her. Again, a loud thump on the floor by a skater starts the music up again. The
camera follows the skater, showing along other people doing different things.
At the end, the girl who lead sings is longer the same girl, she has short blond
hair, but is still wearing the same colored dress; this breaks continuity due to
the girls changing completely without warning from one scene to another. As
the camera dollies upward, we can see everyone's synchronized dancing
before the song ends and everyone gets in their cars and everything seems
normal again. The text of the name of the movie appears the moment that the
sound of the doors closing is heard, suddenly.
The movie has a lot of camera work and the sound is almost always diegetic due that it's a musical. For this same
reason, it breaks the rules of reality that we would have for a teen drama or a thriller.
