evaluation: question 1

We like the idea of having blood in our opening as it represents guilt. Our inspiration for this was Macbeth as she has the famous line ‘out damned spot’. So we used fake blood and added some shots of me washing blood off of my hands to represent guilt and intrigue the audience as to where the blood has come from.

 For our music, we were inspired by the Jaws theme tune as the simple piano notes created an increasing amount of tension. On the left is a picture of our music on garage band. It contained long low piano notes to create tension.

In the ‘True Detective title sequence there is a shot of the setting. The outside, spacious environment makes the audience feel isolated. We wanted to create the effect in our opening that the character is isolated. This would also build tension as she is vulnerable. We made sure we included shots of the trees bearing down on her to signify to the audience that the character was isolated and vulnerable.

We have a close up of a character carving an X into a log. We used inspiration from’ Seven’s’ title sequence as there are a lot of close ups. These close-ups give the audience a sense of wonder and mystery as to who the character is and what they are doing. More explanation here using the term connote

We wanted our font to be simple but effective. In the ‘Seven’ title sequence their font is in white over a black background. The white connotes innocence and purity whereas the black connotes death and evil; we wanted this kind of contrast to come across in our opening. Also, the font is like scrawled writing, we weren't sure about this as we didn't know whether it would fit in our opening as it could look unprofessional but we like the ‘edited by’ font as we believe it is clear, simple and effective so we decided to use something similar In our opening.

There is a scene in ‘A Tale of Two Sisters, a Korean horror film, of a bloody bag being dragged through a hallway. We took inspiration from this and decided to do something similar but apply it to the thriller genre. So we decided to drag a bag through the mud. The bag creates a sense of mystery as the audience will want to know what is in there.

In ‘Memento they created a successful effect by putting some shots backwards. This creates a feel of disorientation and confusion and gets the audience asking questions such as, is she going back in time? We decided to put some of our shots backwards to also get this effect.

In ‘Leon’ one of the main characters is an innocent young girl. We wanted an innocent girl in our thriller to create tension as the audience automatically assume she is the victim. Also, an audience are more likely to feel sympathy for a young female as stereo typically speaking; women are seen as less capable of defending themselves.

The 1975s music video ‘Robbers’ is a short film in itself, in it, a character leaves a bloody hand print on a white background. We took inspiration from this and decided to incorporate a similar shot into our thriller opening as it creates a shock factor and enhances the seriousness of the danger the character is in.

We believe our opening is conventional as we incorporate conventions of the thriller genre for example, the black bag, the character and the blood. We used the black bag to create mystery and suspense. There is lots of suspense and unanswered questions in thrillers so this is why we did this. We picked our location to be unique as there aren't many thrillers set in woods, so this was unconventional of a thriller film. The character was used to create tension as she is alone in the woods this is common in thrillers, to have a vulnerable character, so this is conventional of thrillers. We used the blood to add more of a dramatic feel to the opening. We put some shots in reverse so or opening wouldn't have a clear narrative to intrigue audiences and to make it more interesting to watch.