Gladiator - Start 2 minutes 11 second up to 5 minutes 55 second - First 2 minutes 10 seconds are credits and info about the Roman Empire -

The scene stars out with the non-diagetic sound of trumpets and drums creating a very triumphant and powerful feeling. The scene stars of with a medium shot tracking cavalry but then zoom out to a long shot with a high angle view over a roman army. The camera then goes to track the movement of the character Maximus while he is walking through the Roman ground legions to consult with his other leaders. While he is walking the non-diagetic music is playing, he receives respect from the men and they salute and idolize him this is done with close up shots and medium shots of the men and their faces, they kneel, bow heads in respect and smile when they see him. There is a sense that they feel safer with him around. This combined with the triumphant music creates a sense of respect and greatness of Maximus in the audience’s eyes.

The music starts to die down and the audience as well as the characters here the cry of the enemy German tribe army and their battle cries, the audience then see a horse ride up towards the Roman placement on the battlefield with the messenger that Maximus and his fellow leaders were talking about.
The audience then now a battle is about to happen. The don-diagetic music starts to play up again but not like it was before, it starts off with just drums beating showing the presence of the Germans, they are introduced with just a single German standing on a small mound of dirt holding the riders head that the Romans sent out. The German then shouts something and the cameras goes from a medium shot on him to a long shot of behind him and we see a huge scale army come out from the woods and now know the epic scale of the battle, the trumpets start to play again and so a feeling on tension, fear and excitement for what is about to happen is created in the audiences mind, and so the two armies eye each other.
The diagetic sound of the German war cries are heard and still tension is building in the audiences mind.

The Roman army starts to mobilize and prepare and Maximus rides off. When he starts to ride off he says something to his other leader “On my signal, release hell”, a close up is used here on Maximus face and the audience can see how calm he is, creating a feeling of respect again because he is so calm he knows what he’s doing, creating respect for him in the audience eyes. Now the trumpets start to play and join in with the drums creating another attitude and feeling in the audiences mind, the non-diagetic music is very heroic and gives off the sense of a huge battle and lets the audience know that the battle is going to happen soon and it will be off a massive scale and it will be epic.

As Maximus is leaving, the men stand up and prepare for battle and the camera goes from tracking his movement with low angle point of view shots which help create that sense of respect that the men have for him because he rides tall and looks strong and heroic, and from long shots which again gives the audience the scale and presence of the Romans and Maximus’ army.
Maximus now rides off into the woods and the audience get another glimpse of the German army and get to make a comparison of both army and realise how dominant the Romans were at the time which their technology and military tactics, and so the audience get a true sense of action and excitement because they knows it’s going to be a good win for the Romans and great battle.

This is full of tension building scenes and music and is there to create the up and coming battle more spectacular.


I have decided to stop it here because the audience get a sense and taste of what’s to come without any action, and so I think this is a great action opening. Also I didn’t want to go on much longer than the time gap because for our piece it needs to be a minimum of 2 minutes and it will be hard to make that up to a good standard, so short clips are good to analyse because they can help our group realise what can be done in a short time to create a good opening.