How LOST GIRL Grabs Attention With A Hot Cold Open
Opinion varies on exactly how long you have to grab a viewer’s attention, but for a TV show, imagine you have five minutes or to the first commercial break (whichever comes first) to keep it.
Lost Girl shot a pilot (remember those days?) to sell itself, but instead of filming the first script, they shot what would become Episode 1.08 “Vexed”. The episode needed to sell the show and sketch all the main characters and their powers clearly, but not necessarily do as much world-building as a pilot (I, Mel, talked more about this choice way back in the day).
How does the cold open use shots alongside story to accomplish all this? Watch on.
Video CW: partial nudity, blood / open wound
This entrance is bloody spectacular, a tracking shot moving down as an elevator cage moves up, revealing Bo from silhouetted head to stiletto’d feet. Usually a camera move like this is gazing at an objectified female form — with or without suggesting a man is doing the same — but this plays with those expectations by using between-floor light to show Bo bruised and bleeding. The instinct then may be to see her as a victim, but she’ll reveal in a moment she’s actually the victor.
The scene begins intercutting Bo with a shirtless Dyson, hitting a punching bag in time with the music.
As Bo stumbles from the elevator down an industrial hallway, Dyson’s punches increases in pace and intensity. As Bo nears his door, Dyson punches the bag from camera right, immediately followed by Bo clutching her stomach and falling against the wall camera left.
In prior story Bo and Dyson have an emotionally tumultuous on-again/off-again thing going. Even without that context, or knowing anything about the characters — let alone their relationship — this intercutting all about bloody lips and being pummelled suggests to us they have capital-haytch History together.
Bo and Dyson change from silhouettes to fully-faced characters as the door opens, then the music (“Sour Cherry” by The Kills) seamlessly transitions ‘oohs’ and ‘uhs’ from punches to sex . . . not ‘regular’ sex, but sex which heals Bo’s bloodied wound. The closeup of Bo’s shoulder focuses on her wound magically healing as Dyson’s out-of-focus face contorts in the corner of the frame.
One sure way to grab attention.
Although this episode doesn’t fully explain how Bo’s powers work, the opening two minutes demonstrates the basics — and then some — purely through shots and visuals.
On the screenwriting front: after they’re done showing, Bo tells she has ‘clients’ she works for, brings up a love triangle and a girl named Lauren (twice), has jovial banter with her best friend while actively partnering in crime, and everyone’s fully up to speed — plus a bonus mysterious dead body! — before the credits roll us to the five minute mark.
See, all it takes to grab attention is pretty shots, tight writing, clever visual demonstration of the world rules, superior editing, catchy soundtrack, and sex.
Easy.