Napoleon Dynamite

'Napoleon Dynamite is a 2004 American film co-written and directed by Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess and stars Jon Heder as Napoleon Dynamite. The film was Jared Hess' first full-length feature and is partially adapted from his earlier short film, Peluca. The film follows the highschool life of Napoleon Dynamite.'

•  Genre: Comedy
•  Released: 2004
• Director: Jared Hess, Jerusha Hess
• Starring: Jon Heder, Jon Gries, Efren Ramirez
• Budget: $400,000
• Box office:$ 46,118,097
• Distributed by:Fox Searchlight Pictures, Paramount Pictures

Analysis

 

The way in which Napoleon Dynamite roles the opening credits is a different concept to that I’ve seen of many other films. It presents the names of people credited for the film of pieces of food, written on stationery and notebooks. Instantly the unhealthy food and school equipment give the impression that this film is going to be centered around a teen and that is primary audience is in fact teens. By purposefully crating the opening scenes on a low budget with the hope of creating an amateur effect, adds to the idea that this film is for teenagers. As the film title suggests only one name it could be gathered that this film is going to be centered on the life of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ so by showing different foods and objects at the beginning could be a way of showing his interests and gathering an insight into him as a person. It immediately wants the audience to get to know the character so that they can become engaged with the character and film throughout.

 

I like how the filmmakers have been so creative with the opening titles as it is clear a lot of thought has gone into them. They definitely set the tone for the rest of the film something which is important really helps give an insight as I said before, into the character profile of Napoleon dynamite.

Notes

I liked the idea of how the food, stationary, chapstick etc, helped produce a character profile. Instead though for our film, we decided we would try and do this in the opening scenes with a voice over and hopefully create a character profile with the audience on each character this way. The way in which it credits the people involved is also something we want to draw on as we were thinking of the idea that at the very beginning a notepad/ sheets of paper could be dropped by one of our characters at the beginning and on them could be the names of the director, editor, producer etc.