Title Screen - Our title opening is very basic, but coupled with the cut to black after the antagonist supposedly punches the victim, we think it works very well even if it is a basic title screen. The black and white colours and lack of anything else is quite impacting and effective.
Setting/location -Once we decided on the genre we were doing for our film opening, after some research and textual analysis we found out an effective place to do our opening was somewhere isolated, and the easiest and convenient place for us was a wood/forested setting. It appealed to us because in the right conditions it can be made to be seen to have an isolated and creepy feel about the whole place. Another factor that made us film in that location because it was so easily accessible to us as well as being close by. Fortunately for us there were some miscellaneous objects that happened to be there, which we filmed and put into our opening such as the piled logs, smouldering pile and the dog.
Costumes and props - The props and costume that we used in the opening of our film required a lot of thought, this was due to the fact that we needed props and costumes that fit into the genre and that we could also wear/use easily. Our first thoughts were that we needed a shovel in order to dig a hole to throw the victim into, however we decided against this as we would need to get a shovel and also dig a hole into our local forest which would most likely be frowned upon by the community and also could cause a safety hazard for people using the forest. We decided to use the car for most of the shots during the opening as this allowed the audience to pay less attention towards what was happening with the props but instead pay attention to the mise-en scene and also the location and setting. The costumes on the characters needed to look casual this is due to the fact that in the films theory this would cause less suspicion among the characters and this also backs up the point that people do not need to be dressed in common criminal attire to commit crimes in film.
Camerawork and editing - In our location we carefully considered our options for getting camera angles. Much of the ground was uneven and it sometimes took time to get the tripod set up in a straight position. However we found some good shots which really made some frames look effective. The shot shown above with the weltering flowers we thought was a very effective shot as it denotes death and neglect, we were impressed how much it fitted in with our genre and how we made it into an effective shot. We also found some other shots that brought out some feel of neglect and isolation such as the piled logs and stray dog, the smouldering pile also brought a feel of hostility about the place, adding this all into our opening we thought was very effective. Our editing was simply cuts, however we thought we could make the editing more effective by timing it with the music. It cuts quite often with in the time of the music stings in the music we used, this made it seem far more effective and professional. We also feel we managed to pull off our final cut to black very effectively and timed it will with the punch and it nicely flowed into the title screen.
Title and font style - We ran through a few different types of fonts and styles, we eventually settled on a plain white colour with a font that looked informal and creepy. We chose this font because we aimed to get a similar feel to how the font was used in the opening of the movie Se7en, with it looking handwritten and having quite an ominous feel about it. Some previous things we tried with the font was putting an echo effect on it, where there would be a translucent and larger copy of the text behind the initial text, we ended up scrapping this because it looked a bit ineffective, as well as looking unprofessional with titles with a lot more text because it ended up that the echo effect was squashed in the background. We also thought about using a different font colour, our first thought was using red, as it connotes danger and death and blood which are all conventions of horror. However, after trying it with the opening we soon found out it looked a bit out of place and odd, we then changed it to a basic white which keeps in with the theme of dull colours and lacking in any colour.
Story and how the opening sets it up - Most of our opening is setting the scene for our location rather than actually setting up a story, the only real plot development is at the end when we see the punching of the victim. The audience should get the idea that from these 2 minutes there is a criminal who's identity is unknown but they hold people captive for, again, unknown reasons. The opening may give off the impression that the story is about the person who has been captured by the antagonist and how they might escape or worse. Since most of the opening is clouded in mystery it's hard to get much narrative from it at all, but there is a clear disturbance in equilibrium which sets up the rest of the film (following Todorov's narrative).
Genre and how the opening suggests it - The opening utilises many horror/thriller genre. We aimed to make our opening look as lifeless as possible and get the whole area to look neglected and isolated. We believe we managed to achieve this very well, especially with the added scenes like the piled logs and smouldering pile. It created a sense of hostility and danger and at the same time an uneasy and creepy feel which we think sets the location and our genre up perfectly. The antagonist is already introduced showing that there is already a bad character out to disturb the equilibrium, which is the case in most other horror/thriller openings.
How the characters are introduced - There is only one character introduced and he remains completely mute. The name, origins and motives of this person remain unknown for the entire opening. The audience can only gather that he is most likely going to be the antagonist of the film. The purpose of this is to create an enigma about who this person, it will encourage people to keep watching in order to understand who he is and what his agenda is. The victim's identity is also kept entirely secret, they aren't even shown. There is a POV shot of the victim at the very end but it tells us nothing about who they are or how they got into this situation, this again creates another enigma which may hook the audience into continuing to watch. Our overall aim of our opening was to set up a very strong enigma and at the same time keep it very tense that would incite the audience to carry on watching the rest of our film and we believe that we have achieved this well
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