Focus: Openings

For our opening we need to decide what is going to happen and how everything will turn out. Previously we have looked at an instant death and films where they start with the end. These films were 'Scream' and 'Stay' and our analysis can be seen here: 

I will be looking at the pros and cons of each opening method and coming to a conclusion of what we can use for our film opening. 

Instant death opening:
Pros:

• The viewer is immediately ingorssed into the film.
• The viewer will want to know why the victim has been targetted.
• The viewer will want to know how they were killed, (sometimes, even thought the death is shown in the opening, it is not clear how it happens or why, it is left to be figured out by other characters in the rest of the film)
• The viewer is made to feel very uneasy from the beginning.
• By having action straight away keeps the viewer interested in the film.
• The immediate death scene can be made to look original by combining the idea with a great location and good casting of actors.

Cons

• If the viewer doesn't think the death is very original, they may be put of the rest of the film and stop watching.
• They may not find it very interesting, in an opening they might prefer background information to the overall story, instead of a death which they have no reasoning for.
• They may feel that it is predictable.

There are lots of film openings which use the instant death idea, such as 'Scream', 'The Ring', 'Jaws', 'Sinister' and 'The Last House on the Left' showing that there is a demand for instant death horror films. (See example above).
Starts with the end opening:
Pros: 

• We immediately see the conclusion, and it allows the viewer to work out what happens as the rest of the film continues.
• It may confuse viewers.
• The viewer can watch the story and it will explain the ending to them (sometimes endings do not make it clear what happens to all the characters)

Cons:

• Sometimes many people are often disappointed with the ending of horror films, so by putting this at the beginning may decrease the viewing satisfaction.
• You need to come up with a really good story line to have the ending, and make sure it will work and enough details can be shown in the ending.
• There is less suspense as the viewer already knows the outcome and there is less mystery.
• The film may not be as interesting.
• You can immediately put people off the film if they do not like the outcome of the ending. They will stop watching.
• The film may not be as scary as the viewer already knows what the potential threat is to them.

Conclusion:
In our group we have decided we will produce a film opening which features an instant death. This is because we feel it is the most interesting and we can portray it well. It will also mean the viewers are drawn into our opening and would want to find out what happens to all the characters, and the victims. It makes the viewer much more interested, and the opening will be scarier because of the threat, which is likely to be unknown in the opening, or, its intentions will be unknown.

Focus: Lighting

In openings lighting can be used to create many different effects and change the atmosphere radically. In some of the films looked at previously such as Jaws, The Ring and Shrooms, the lighting often follows a certain theme, and this is that it is usually very dark, and could have been shot at night outside, or using low artificial lighting inside a building. We can use this when looking at filming our own film opening, and decide how it is best to achieve a dark atmosphere, hopefully making it as effective and scary as possible. I will look at each film and pick out some key points which are effective for that opening.

Jaws:

• During the opening, an establishing shot is used to show the characters running to the beach. When looking at camera angles for this section, we see that the characters are just silhouettes and we cannot pick out any details about them. This makes them quite mysterious and the lighting means we can't tell much about their intentions. This film opening features an instant death, and the dark lighting could be foreshadowing this because of it's darkness.
• When Chrissie's friend falls down the hill, we the sunset in the background for a few seconds. This use of lighting shows that any happiness is now leaving the scene. We could use this in  our film opening to show how the darkness becomes a threat to any characters in the scene and engulfs the happy, almost safe surroundings.
• Overall in the opening of Jaws, the lighting is dark throughout, and this could be foreshadowing what is to happen in the rest of the film. It also suggests to the viewer immediately that this bad experience can happen again at night, and gives them something to look out for in the rest of the film. We can use this overall darkness in our opening if we were to use an instant death because it would show the danger the character is in and how vulnerable they are.

The Ring:

• In the opening shot of The Ring, an establishing shot is used to show a house at night, during a storm. This immediately sets the scene at nighttime, and we again see the theme of darkness being used in an opening. It is a sign of bad things to come.
• As the girls talk and tell each other about the tape, they are in an artificially lit room. However, the lighting is still not very bright suggesting that they are in danger and are vulnerable. It also shows that the danger they fear has already 'found' them. For example, in our own film opening we could use darkness repeatedly to show how characters are in danger as soon as there is darkness, because it presents the unknown and allows threats to manifest and surprise the unsuspecting weak victims in the scene.
• Katie's main threat in this opening is the television, as this is ultimately what will confront her, what is important to look out for in this scene, is that the room which the main television sits in is in darkness. There are no lights on in that room, only a small shaft of light seeps in through the window from a street lamp. This shows how when she is face to face with the television, she is no longer in a safe area, she has gone into the darker parts of the room and therefore is in incredible danger and has no escape.
• This shows how we use the idea of darkness itself as some kind of threat in our film opening.

Shrooms:

• In the opening of Shrooms, we see a girl running through the forest, juxtaposed with images from inside a building. As she is running, the area seems to be quite bright, however, the trees and shrubs around her are in darkness - they are just silhouettes.
• Throughout the shots from inside the building, often both sides of the frame are complete darkness, there is only a white coloured light on the dominant part of the frame, this ranges from a rope to an extreme close up of some body's eye.
• This shows how the viewer is being made to feel very confined by the lighting used. By using darkness at the edges of the frame not only suggests that darkness, and therefore the threat is getting nearer and nearer to the characters on screen and the viewer, but also that it is inevitable and there is no escape.
• This idea continues even once we see the characters on the plane, their seats are the only ones which appear to be lit up, again drawing all the attention to them as they are the dominant part part of the scene, but showing how again, the darkness is nearly upon them.

By looking at all these film openings and their use of lighting, we can see that in ours, we should try and incorporate lighting as an addition to our chosen threat. This means we will be able to give the threat more power, by associating it with darkness, as this is a common theme in film openings.