Soaps Original Openings

[DavidEvanSmith]

I liked the IDEA behind ATWT's white opening in 1999, but I agree it was poorly executed. The mosaic globe effect was the best part of it, but it looked so cheap and bland with actors against a stark white background. It smacked of "we need to be able to edit this cheaply because we have high cast turnover."

The AW opening DOES seem like a ripoff (even the "AW" initials are in a little black box like "ER") even though I never noticed the parallel before. It's the soap opera version of the primetimey ER opening. Some of AW's shots were nice, but the ones set in a Sears photo studio in the local mall, look hella cheap compared to the shots on location outdoors. And the shot of the five or six young thugs who looked like they were about to knock you down and steal your purse was a little too confrontational. Does granny who watched AW really want to feel like she was gonna get mugged by an opening sequence?

I love the ER opening and wish GH had done something to emulate it back when they had actual medical staff in their cast. It just wouldn't work now with Sam McCall falling off a roof again and Jason and Sonny running around on the docks firing their guns at "bad mobsters" and accidentally hitting pregnant women and small children. Granny wouldn't want to see that either.

PC tried to copy the ER opening too, but they were doing it in a hokey sitcom style by "fooling around" with a hospital gurney instead of like, ya know... saving lives. At the very least, the shift to vampires and supernatural storytelling spared me the sight of Karen #3 tickling Joe #2 on a hospital gurney and Eve and Ian toasting champagne for New Years(?) in the hospital's on-call room in the opening credits.

I find it so interesting hearing what everyone considers to be the iconic openings and images for soaps. Shows how varied everyone's tastes are and what they think the theme of the show is supposed to be.

And I think I know what drugs one needs to take to have that GL disco opening experience. I think I took them Saturday night. WOW. Josh was cute but looked like a complete perv with a foot fetish in that opening. It very much wins the Train Wreck award from this thread.