WHAT AN OPENING SEQUENCE SHOULD DO
Institution information (titles and credits)
Establishing iconography
Music or lack of music/soundtrack
Create enigma
Reprentation
Ideology
Clues that relate to the future of the story
engages the audience
sets the atmosphere (audience can establish the genre)
CONVENTIONS OF A HORROR MOVIE
Darkness
Suspense
Big houses
Mental illness
Deserted places
Death/Gory
Secret/mysterious unknown characters
vulnerable girl
Devil/ghosts/zombie/villain
For our media project we were put into groups and asked to prepare an opening sequence of a new fiction film lasting roughly two minutes. My group consisted of three people; Loren, Charlotte and I. We decided to work on around a ‘horror’ genre as we thought this would be challenging yet enjoyable. Our opening sequence is about a young girl who has just come home from a wild night out, not expecting what is yet to happen to her. Whilst she is home alone, she hears things in her house (I.e. the door slam, or the TV switch on.) Little does she know someone else is in the house with her. This someone else is the local mini cab driver, who drops off drunken girls back to their house. He is mentally disturbed and kills every girl he drops home, leaving them with nothing but a scar across their neck. The character in our opening sequence is a girl from our own group, Charlotte. The crew list include Charlotte, Loren and I. Finally the location we shot our sequence at is a house on Buckingham Avenue, Whetstone. The conventions of a horror genre include the narrative structure (equilibrium), the mise-en-scene (darkness, wooden decrepit buildings e.t.c) and the characters (villain, zombies, a vulnerable young girl e.t.c) In ‘Psycho’ (Hitchock, 1960) the villain is Norman Bates, played by Anthony Pekins, who kills the main protagonist.
Similarly, the villain in our opening sequence is the mini cab driver who however, isn’t shown in the opening sequence. Todorovs’ classic narrative theory is otherwise known as the equilibrium. This is portrayed in our opening sequence as it starts with a shot of Charlotte entering the house slightly drunk, during these first shots, the opening sequence introduces the character and the location. We then move to the disruption; when mysterious things (i.e the door slamming and TV switching on) start to occur. We can relate this to successful horror movies such as ‘Disturbia’ (Caruso, 2007), which begins with Kyle and his father in a normal situation, it is the disturbed by the car crash and the father dying and is then met to a resolution by Robert Turner being caught and all is happy again. Our sequence shows the earlier signs of the equilibrium theory, we weren’t able to present the resolution through our sequence as we didn’t have enough time and it would’ve left nothing to the audiences’ imagination.
We were very much inspired by the decrepit, deserted house the mother stayed in, in Psycho and thought it worked really well with the genre. Similarly our mise-en- scene fitted in well with our genre as we shot in an ideal location of a large, empty, old fashioned, Victorian house with a creaky staircase. Using a big, isolated house rather than a small flat makes the girl seem more vulnerable as nobody is like to save her. Finally, the character played a classic, horror based, young, white, middle-class, vulnerable girl, naive enough to walk outside into the dark on her own! Charlottes’ role serves a certain function in our narrative. It gives the audience an insight into what will happen to the rest of the girls the mini cab mans victims. The typical theme of our film is isolation and voyeurism.
The conventions of an opening sequence should contain the narrative functions (i,e establish narrative structure, introduce a character, etc) and also contain narrative conventions (i,e use of titles as credits/event signifiers, significance of soundtrack – establishing mood etc). A font that inspired us was the shaking font used in ‘The Ring’ (2002, Verbinski) opening sequence. The font created an eerie feel which we wished to bring across in ours. Below is a sample of one of the fonts we looked at for our opening sequence and the font which was used in 'The Ring'
We used Levis Strauss theory of coping with the fundamental contradictions by using binary opposites such as good/evil and light/dark. In ‘Scarred’, Charlotte represents the good as she plays an innocent, vulnerable young girl and the unknown mysterious character plays an evil role. Light/dark binary opposites play a large theme in our opening sequence as Charlotte is always walking into the darkness. (She enters the dark house, she walks into the dark kitchen, and she walks up the stairs into the darkness e.t.c) 
We thought creating enigma is an important aspect of a horror genre, and made sure our sequence was very enigmatic. The TV switching off and door opening makes the audience want to know more. It imposes questions such as ‘Who is this person/object?’ and ‘Why are they doing this?’ ‘The ring’ is a spine chilling movie which contains many enigma codes. In the opening sequence for the ring, there is an extreme close up of the actress’ hand whilst turning the knob on a door. This leaves the audience wondering what is on the other side of the door and imposes many questions amongst them. Finally we’ve set our opening sequence in real time as we thought this would be most plausible and would create most impact as we take the audience through Charlottes’ every step second by second.
Overall, our opening sequence stuck with the main conventions of a horror sequence, like successfull horror movies - 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’(Hooper - 1974) as we wanted to please the audience and make the sequence familiar to other film openings rather than giving them something new. We used a variety of shots to stick rigidly to continuity and we deliberately had no dialogue so that the audience focuses on the action codes.
Institution information (titles and credits)
Establishing iconography
Music or lack of music/soundtrack
Create enigma
Reprentation
Ideology
Clues that relate to the future of the story
engages the audience
sets the atmosphere (audience can establish the genre)
CONVENTIONS OF A HORROR MOVIE
Darkness
Suspense
Big houses
Mental illness
Deserted places
Death/Gory
Secret/mysterious unknown characters
vulnerable girl
Devil/ghosts/zombie/villain
For our media project we were put into groups and asked to prepare an opening sequence of a new fiction film lasting roughly two minutes. My group consisted of three people; Loren, Charlotte and I. We decided to work on around a ‘horror’ genre as we thought this would be challenging yet enjoyable. Our opening sequence is about a young girl who has just come home from a wild night out, not expecting what is yet to happen to her. Whilst she is home alone, she hears things in her house (I.e. the door slam, or the TV switch on.) Little does she know someone else is in the house with her. This someone else is the local mini cab driver, who drops off drunken girls back to their house. He is mentally disturbed and kills every girl he drops home, leaving them with nothing but a scar across their neck. The character in our opening sequence is a girl from our own group, Charlotte. The crew list include Charlotte, Loren and I. Finally the location we shot our sequence at is a house on Buckingham Avenue, Whetstone. The conventions of a horror genre include the narrative structure (equilibrium), the mise-en-scene (darkness, wooden decrepit buildings e.t.c) and the characters (villain, zombies, a vulnerable young girl e.t.c) In ‘Psycho’ (Hitchock, 1960) the villain is Norman Bates, played by Anthony Pekins, who kills the main protagonist.
Similarly, the villain in our opening sequence is the mini cab driver who however, isn’t shown in the opening sequence. Todorovs’ classic narrative theory is otherwise known as the equilibrium. This is portrayed in our opening sequence as it starts with a shot of Charlotte entering the house slightly drunk, during these first shots, the opening sequence introduces the character and the location. We then move to the disruption; when mysterious things (i.e the door slamming and TV switching on) start to occur. We can relate this to successful horror movies such as ‘Disturbia’ (Caruso, 2007), which begins with Kyle and his father in a normal situation, it is the disturbed by the car crash and the father dying and is then met to a resolution by Robert Turner being caught and all is happy again. Our sequence shows the earlier signs of the equilibrium theory, we weren’t able to present the resolution through our sequence as we didn’t have enough time and it would’ve left nothing to the audiences’ imagination.We were very much inspired by the decrepit, deserted house the mother stayed in, in Psycho and thought it worked really well with the genre. Similarly our mise-en- scene fitted in well with our genre as we shot in an ideal location of a large, empty, old fashioned, Victorian house with a creaky staircase. Using a big, isolated house rather than a small flat makes the girl seem more vulnerable as nobody is like to save her. Finally, the character played a classic, horror based, young, white, middle-class, vulnerable girl, naive enough to walk outside into the dark on her own! Charlottes’ role serves a certain function in our narrative. It gives the audience an insight into what will happen to the rest of the girls the mini cab mans victims. The typical theme of our film is isolation and voyeurism.
The conventions of an opening sequence should contain the narrative functions (i,e establish narrative structure, introduce a character, etc) and also contain narrative conventions (i,e use of titles as credits/event signifiers, significance of soundtrack – establishing mood etc). A font that inspired us was the shaking font used in ‘The Ring’ (2002, Verbinski) opening sequence. The font created an eerie feel which we wished to bring across in ours. Below is a sample of one of the fonts we looked at for our opening sequence and the font which was used in 'The Ring'
We used Levis Strauss theory of coping with the fundamental contradictions by using binary opposites such as good/evil and light/dark. In ‘Scarred’, Charlotte represents the good as she plays an innocent, vulnerable young girl and the unknown mysterious character plays an evil role. Light/dark binary opposites play a large theme in our opening sequence as Charlotte is always walking into the darkness. (She enters the dark house, she walks into the dark kitchen, and she walks up the stairs into the darkness e.t.c) We thought creating enigma is an important aspect of a horror genre, and made sure our sequence was very enigmatic. The TV switching off and door opening makes the audience want to know more. It imposes questions such as ‘Who is this person/object?’ and ‘Why are they doing this?’ ‘The ring’ is a spine chilling movie which contains many enigma codes. In the opening sequence for the ring, there is an extreme close up of the actress’ hand whilst turning the knob on a door. This leaves the audience wondering what is on the other side of the door and imposes many questions amongst them. Finally we’ve set our opening sequence in real time as we thought this would be most plausible and would create most impact as we take the audience through Charlottes’ every step second by second.Overall, our opening sequence stuck with the main conventions of a horror sequence, like successfull horror movies - 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’(Hooper - 1974) as we wanted to please the audience and make the sequence familiar to other film openings rather than giving them something new. We used a variety of shots to stick rigidly to continuity and we deliberately had no dialogue so that the audience focuses on the action codes.
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