Blue Velvet analysis

In the introduction to blue velvet the first imagery you see is a white picket fence with red flowers and a blue sky. This imagery represents the American flag; this puts the audience in a state of mind that the film they’re about to watch is going to be patriotic or that’s what I interpreted when I first seen the clip. Throughout the first scene the red is being represented for example the fire engine.

The music is cheerful and plays throughout the opening clip having also relating to the name of the film ‘blue velvet’ being sung by Bobby Vinton. The first scene shows the stereotypical 50’s/60’s American suburban town: The blue sky, happy and active people, and green lawns an all-round American utopia or others refer to as the American dream. However the dream soon turns into a nightmare when a tense     build-up of a hose pipe about to burst; then suddenly he collapses.

 

In the build up to the man collapsing on the floor there are many sounds. The water dispersing out of the tap shows suspense because the audience thinks that the hose pipe is going to burst of the tap and cause an accident but it never actually did. When the man fell a dog runs over to bark and play with the water spraying out of the end of the hose pipe. A baby then wonders across him crying but what’s surprising is that the town is so work up upon that they’re life is so perfect and nothing could go wrong that they let their baby roam the streets unsupervised. However there is a visual metaphor including beetles that surpasses their happy lives.     

 

The editing throughout the first scene is fade in and out to show a settled/calmness to the town. Meaning that if it was an unsettled environment then the fade in and out wouldn’t be as effective due to the fact that if someone was being attacked there would be a more abrupt editing transitions like a straight cut.

 

After the man falls over the camera angle is of an extreme close up to the ground in which looks like the camera moving through the grass as if it was a jungle. The extreme close up soon gets a close up of a beetles nest and them scuttling across each other. The meaning behind this as I found out from watching a brief analogy of the opening scene in which they explained, that the beetles show beneath the happiness and bright life that there is a darkness in everyone’s life and that no one can be safe from the real world.