These nine frames show screenshots I took from our final thriller opening. They are key in the parts that make our thriller opening so unique as well as fitting into the normal conventions of a normal title sequence.
The first shot shows the first thing that appears in our opening which shows our production companys name.We made sure that it turned as it entered so it ironically relates to our production companys name. We created it to appear differently to the rest of our titles as it shows the difference between a credit and our production company's name.
The second shot shows the main victim within our film. She is the first character to be introduced to the audience so the audience can compare her to the next character and become sympathetic towards her. We used the night vision setting as this makes it clear that we are seeing the victim asleep without the shot becoming too dark. It also begins the story as we can see that the girl is having a bad dream or is confused as to why she is seen in this way giving the audience various enigmas on the storyline.
The third shot introduces our stalker to the film. We can straight away see the contrast in characters from the innocent looking girl sleeping in a distressed way to a male stalker in a busy place and standing out from the croud.Like real thriller films we had to consider the costumes for both characters, the white hoodie on the male stalker to stand out as different and the female victim wearing everyday clothes to fit in with normal teenage life and relate to our target audience more effeciently. We chose the busy park in contrast to the peaceful bedroom as the juxta position can help the audience understand our storyline better. At this point the film is fast forwarded so that we can see that time has gone by and creates a fast paced thrlling effect to our shot.
The fourth shot continues to follow the stalkers actions. The audience now identifies the stalker with following the victim as we see him looking at a picture of her online. This is a key part of our opening as before this shot the characters had not been seen together or as a part of each others lives. The opening conforms to the general conventions of a title sequence as it creates many questions for the audience like Why is he looking at pictures of her? Do they know each other? etc.
The fifth shot shows the stalker continuing to look at pictures of the girl again emphasising the fact that he is following her. We can see the pink background is not the stalkers house and this makes the audience question where he is. Through the music the opening suggests its a thriller as it is faced paced and thrilling and through this character hiding their eyes as if they don't want to be identified and without a smile it is clear that the film is not a comedy/romantic/family film.
The sixth shot shows the continuity of the storyline. It shows the female victim walking after previously seeing this character wake up we can see that she is on a journey. When filming we made sure that we took a variety of shots to show the continuity of her walking without following her the whole way there to keep the audience on edge and interested.
The seventh shot continues to show the girl walking and the stalker watching her from a distance again bringing the two characters together so we know the rest of the film will include both characters in some way relating to each other. We can now see the girl in the park where the stalker was previously shown waiting earlier. As the female victim is not walking towards the other character we get the sense that she doesn't know she is being followed relating back to our title 'The Unknown'.
The eigth shot shows the girl's phone whilst she is sitting on a bench in the park. We recorded this shot several times as we found that even with the tripod and focus on the camera it became slightly blurly. The audience knows that the stalker we have been introduced to has sent this message as this is the only other character that's been shown in our opening.
The ninth shot shows the title of our film shown at the end of our opening the way that the title enters is similar to the title of the film 'Se7en' and so creates the thriller effect that as a group were looking for. Through using after effects we were able to create it in this way enticing the audience to watch the rest of our film and wanting to find out what happens to both of the characters that have just been introduced.
These are all clips from various thriller films in which I found inspiring. They are all examples of films from the thriller genre that have an effective storyline as well as an excellent title sequence.
The first shot shows the film 'Se7en' and its opening title. Our credits were produced with a smiliar typography, however we made sure that our production company logo was slightly different to our credits to show that our film company wasn't necessarily only focussed on thriller films. It would be shown on every film that our production company made so we wanted to create it suitable for all genres of films. Even though this title doesn't show the production title we still found it inspiring and only decided to change our production logo from a similar one in post production.
The second shot is from a clip in 'Paranormal Activity' which is a psychological thriller. We found this inspiring and it is very similar to our own films second shot. We also found that the night vision setting often used in paranormal activity very inspiring and used this when our female character was sleeping creating an almost psychological thrilling twist to our opening. The green colour of this night vision is also quite different to a lot of thrillers giving the audience a new unique opening.
The third shot is from the teenage thriller 'Kidulthood'. It shows a stalker like the one we created of a younger age wearing a hoodie and with a baseball bat connoting that he is violent. As a group we found this very inspiring as it shows the character we were hoping to portray through our thriller opening also representing the issue of gang culture which is a topic heavily raised by our target audience. This shot is very similar to the third shot in the main clips I took from my film opening.
The fourth shot is from the thriller 'The Ring' I chose this not only because this film was very inspiring but the shot type is very similar to the fourth shot shown in mine. We can see what appears to be the victim a young female with long straight hair which is often seen as the stereotypical victim in most thriller films, this is very similar to ours. This shot creates various enigmas about the character in the background that we can't see as clearly and I found it very effective when watching this film as well as my own.
The fifth shot is from the thriller 'Mimic' it shows many innocent victim on the wall. The way that the camera blurs and then becomes clear creates a scary effect. The way the pictures of victims are shown and then exploited inspired us to show pictures of happy memories from the victim's life to be taken away and ruined almost reflecting what the stalker wants to do to our victims life in reality. We decided not to put this in black and white in post production as the rest of our opening is in colour apart from the shots with a green night vision effect and this would make it lack consistency.
The sixth shot is also from the film 'The Ring' which portrays a girl walking away in the same way we made our character walk to show a journey which also gave us a chance to show the character in another setting.Although this is not typical of all thriller openings to show a journey we thought it would add a better storyline to our opening as it isn't in just one place making our opening seem less repetitive.
The seventh shot shows a man following another man, in the same way our character is watching the other. This creates tension and mystery as you feel sympathetic and helpless for the person being followed. Whilst filming we had to make sure that the camera went slightly out of focus when the character was walking in the background so that we can focus on the stalker and that characters intentions and ambitions involving the victim.
The eighth shot is from the film 'The Caller' which shows a phone showing an unknown number has called. We found the whole idea of new technology being used to stalk people with the computer and the phone inspiring as it shows that our film is very relevant and our target audience can again relate more to it. We also decided to take an extreme close up of this as it emphasises this an important part of our film opening.
The ninth shot is also from the film 'Se7en' showing the way the credit appears. Ours also flash and blur on a blank background as through watching this opening the titles really stuck out to me. When making the music I found that the titles came in very effectively with it.
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