Introduction

My name is Will Caton and I am working in a pair with Alfie Reynolds. We have chosen to do the genre of a horror-thriller theme. Our task is to analyse of film openings of usually of the same genre, this is to help us learn the conventions and for us to form our own ideas to allow us to create our own film opening of the same genre. Some of these conventions include having eerie and tense music that will keep the audience engaged, this adds to a mysterious feel and creates an enigma. There is also a high usage of controlling light, particularly keeping most of the opening in a dark/dusky setting, which also ends up obscuring some of the scene. In addition to the lack of light, it leads to very bland colours that tend to be on the black/white and grey scales. Splashes of colour may be used to draw attention to certain objects (e.g. blood on a dead body or weapon).

I have chosen this genre because as a group we decided that it is a fairly simple genre to gain ideas for, since many of theme follow the conventions you can easily form an idea from watching a few examples of opening sequences. The opening scene has to give off the impression of a horror-thriller, and at the same time have some dark and mysterious enigma undertone. Alfie and I have analysed the opening to the movie Se7en in order to gain some ideas of horror conventions and creating enigmas. I did an analysis of the opening of Reservoir Dogs to get some thriller conventions

The experience I hope to gain is to be able to successfully analyse films openings to quickly understand their genre and conventions, understanding these conventions can lead to creating an effective opening sequence that can set the scene and begin a narrative that is sure to keep the audience entertained and curious.