'The Others' Analysis

When analysing The Others opening sequence we noticed many things:

The film starts with a plain black screen with "Dimension Film Presents" written in plain white font. Fades out into image of a sunset, an orange and black drawing lit with a flickering light like a candle. As soon as the image appears a voice over starts by Nicole Kidman saying "Now children are you sitting comfortably?... Then I'll begin." She then goes on to tell the creating story from the bible.
At the same point that the voice over starts the music also begins, the music has an eerie feel to it yet it is soft and classical at the same time, it is in a minor key. As the opening credits continue the music gets more and more sinister.
We reverse zoom on the sunset image to reveal the rest of the picture, there is a beach and various animals, and a picture of a girl and a boy in the right corner. The voice over then stops as the production name appears in the same font as before.
It then fades to black and a drawing of the same style as before of the bottom of a grand staircase fades in and the camera follows up the stairs until near the top we see the same children as before, they are the same two from the film. We then see a collection of the same style of drawings all containing the two children. The pictures, all relevant to the film, such as images of the puppet, a door being locked, and the boy screaming in bed. The last drawn picture we see is of the mansion look from across the lake, this image then fades into the real image of the mansion as an establishing shot.
We feel that this is a powerful opening sequence as it sets the mood yet does not give anything away from the film. We like the way it is simple yet effective.