Research into the western "The good, The bad, the ugly" opening scene.

Was directed by Sergio Leone in 1966, the studio that produced and distributed that film called Arturo González Producciones Cinematográficas, a Spanish distribution company. 

The budget of the film was $ 1,200,000

Total gross was an estimated $ 25 million worldwide.

The main cast was: 

                                                  

An interesting fact about cast and filming itself:   

In some sequences when Eli Wallach (Tuco) was doing anything with guns in most cases it was unscripted.

Continuing with an actual opening scene. 

We are given scenes in the middle of the desert and in the town as well. We were also introduced to the main characters, all of them are wearing a typical cowboy costume (hat, boots, etc.). We also, most importantly are given scenes of violence and rudeness. From all given narrative, we can assume that the film will be set in the town near or in the center of the desert, also we can highlight the fact that in the film can very well be a lot of parts of violence and even some of the examples of an abusive language.  We can very well assume that the target audience will most likely be 18 years old and up men, maybe even older than eighteen. All of this due to the fact that every character that was introduced to use in the opening sequence of the film had at least one knife, so the film is already predicted to be violent.

The genre itself in this opening scene was shown through variations of technical areas, especially through a mise-en-scene. In this genre, I think that one of the most important suspects of Western film. In the opening scene, there were the majority of the main characters wearing cowboy hats, having guns with them. Location played a massive role as well. If all of this was set in the city center of New York for example that would not look very naturalistic or even like a western. We tend to associate western movies with a dessert, cowboys, a lot of guns, violence, scenes in pubs, all of that was clearly shown in this opening sequence. The sound played a massive role as well. It accented on the actions of (what we can assume) the main character.

There were introduced two main characters. It is clear that there are two main characters due to two factors: 1) He got most of the screen time in the opening sequence.

2) he was in the center of the frame for the major time of the sequence.    

All we know about that main character is that he is a good guy, who helps the police. We can assume so by the fact that he gave police a criminal person who was wanted. e understood that through the same reasons and also by the choice of camera angles and camera composition. Every time when that main character was shown he either appeared in the center of the frame or in the first quarter of the screen. The second main character, however, is not so good, we can see it from all of the opening sequences, because the police were looking for him unlike the other one, and also the second main character was about to be purged in the opening sequence.
 

Continuing with a key moment, I chose to do the beginning part of the opening sequence. Because I think that in this sequence it is very easy to spot the genre of the film. At the beginning of the scene, we have an Establishing Shot (E.S) of the desert and a man who is riding a horse, we have a diegetic ambient sound of a horse. We have an Establishing Shot(E.S) that introduces us to the area -- the desert.  After a few seconds, we have another man in a frame, that is targeting a man on a horse with a gun. We have an over-the-shoulder shot, which still shows us the view and also shows us a part of a man with a gun. We can assume that the man. who was on a horse is one of the main characters due to the fact that any time when he is in the scene, he is either in the center of the frame or in the first thirds (rule of thirds). Talking about the sound we get a diegetic ambient sound and diegetic dialogue. We also get ambient sounds of gunfire. The beginning part of the opening scene is lacking an amount of no-diegetic soundtrack. However, there is one at the end of the beginning scene of the opening sequence. It suggests that something good has happened -- the second main character is now in the frame. We assume so by two factors 1) we can clearly see his face, unlike three other men in the begging of the scene; 2) we get a nice Extreme Close Up (E.C.U) of a first main character and a Close Up (C.U) of a second one. That shows us that the first main character is thankful to the second main character for saving his life.

To conclude, I believe that it was a fairly good opening sequence due to a number of factors. The use of sound, for instance, accented only the important parts, it did not highlight the parts that were not important. The lack of sound in some parts was a really good tool to draw the audience's attention, in my opinion. I also like the fact that this opening sequence introduced two out of three main characters, so it didn't tell us everything within the first few minutes, so you are as an audience member, still want to watch a film. 

Here is an actual opening scene from "The Good, The bad, the ugly"  opening scene.