Leprechaun Opening Analysis - Ak

Leprechaun begins with a Trimark Pictures ident. It then fades into a dark scene with steps leading down to a rocky underground. This uses blue lighting to add a sense of coldness and mystery to the scene. A leprechaun then slowly begins to walk down the stairs. Non-diagetic music is played with long, slow notes that help add to the
strangeness of the scene.


The leprechaun then does a pointing backwards action with his hands, a 'magic' noise is made and the scene fades out to black.

It then fades into a medium shot of the leprechaun sitting on the stairs with a pot of gold laughing and feeling the money. This then cuts to a long shot which has a light coming diagonally from the top right of the shot onto the leprechaun. This lets you see some moss on the wall which makes things seem more mysterious. The leprechaun then says a short poem as it cuts back to a close up of the gold.

It then cuts to a black screen with the words 'Trimark Pictures Presents' on it in a stereotypical Irish font.

Next it cuts to two low angle dutch tilt shots of a black car driving along the road at night. Then it cuts to a high angle long shot of the car driving along a dirt road. The words 'A Mark Jones Film' fade in and out in the same font as before. You see the car to be a short limo which would signify that the person inside it is quite wealthy. There is then a long shot of the limo driving towards the camera.

The screen then cuts to black and the title Leprechaun transitions onto the screen.

There is then another medium long shot of the car driving past and the camera pans across to follow the limo. It then cuts to a medium close up of the front of the car from the side driving across the shot and coming to a quick stop.

There is then a medium shot of a mans legs as he steps out of the car which tilts up to show a middle aged man finishing a bottle of whisky which he then throws onto the ground. There is a close up of the bottle rolling across the ground.

It then cuts back to the man and there is a long shot from behind as he walks towards a rural house. His walk signifies that he is drunk. A woman is standing on the porch looking shocked.

They then begin talking and it provides quite obvious exposition as she calls him by his name and speaks in an Irish accent. The woman asks about why he's in a limo, the man replies by talking about how they are rich and going to start living a more luxurious lifestyle, the woman thinks hes just saying it because hes drunk, the man produces a bag of gold saying that he got it from a leprechaun and she doesnt believe him. I don't think that this works well as firstly, the man isnt very good at acting drunk, and also it is too blatent and to the point. I think that they could have made it much better by having less talking and using mise-en-scene more effectively to show what was happening. Something that I thought was good in this scene was the lighting flashes which in this case was used to get them to go inside and shut up, but in our opening we might be able to incorporate to forshadow something bad happening.

The music throughout has long slow bass notes with high pitched Irish music elements.

The opening is 4 minutes 4 seconds.