Our Opening Sequence

Our Music

Trying to find the right music for our opening sequence was very difficult because we didn't know what kind of music we wanted. We went on to YouTube for some inspiration and searched all types of things. We tried modern music by popular artists but they weren't what we wanted because we wanted typical horror music. 

Harrie found a song from 'The Woman in Black' that was exactly what we were looking for. The sound it made was really sinister and it had sound effects that sounded like children's toys, like the music that you get when you wind a jack-in-the-box. We put it with our opening sequence and it fitted perfectly, especially because we were using pictures and we wanted the picture to change on the beat for effect. We really wanted to be able to use this music in our opening sequence, however we would have had to of got permission to use it and this is a complicated and time-consuming task. We decided that we would  make our own music, and use some of the sounds that the music contains in our media, for example we really wanted it to have the same strong beat so that it fitting in with the picture changes.

We started playing around on garage band and looked at all the different sounds and instruments. We found some sounds that we liked from the 'Dark' and 'Distorted' sections of loops that when combined, gave us a strong beat and the sound we wanted. We repeated this effect throughout the whole song and then added some keyboard effects so that we would have some variety in our music. 

Our Costumes and Props

Our props and costumes included:

Miranda's Outfit:                                                                Amy's Outfit

-white blouse                                                                     -black hoodie
-black skirt                                                                        -black trousers
-black tights                                                                      - black tights we put over her head so her face isn't clearly visible
-black ballet shoes
-'REBEL' t-shirt

Props

-mirror
-torch (to create the light under Miranda's face after she goes into the toilet cubicle)
-makeup (smudged) 
-fake blood
-knife
-sink tap

Permission Forms

Having different locations for our filming meant that in each place we could film different shots and use our surrounding effectively in different ways. As  one of the places that we filmed in was a boarding house, we had to get permission from our housemistress to allow us to film in there.  However, because the rest of our filming was outside, we didn't need to get permission to film there.





We also had to ask permission from our actresses  to involve them in the contents of our filming. The consent form declares 'I hereby consent to act in Charlotte Bill, Amber Chadwick and Harriet May's thriller project. They have my permission to use the footage involving any images of me in any way they need to in terms of the AS project.'


Here follows the consent that Amy and Miranda signed agreeing to our terms and conditions:

Filming Locations

To make our opening sequence as good as possible, we carefully considered the places where it could take place. The location is most important in scenes where most of our filming occurs because it is the location that our audience will see the most. The quick shots are not as important in terms of location as these are not shown for very long. 


As we only needed to film in a couple of locations we were able to film most of our opening sequence in one go.  We chose to film at our school in Paulls house, which is the girls boarding house in the downstairs changing room and bathroom because it has a big mirror which allows you to see yourself full-length and a long, narrow corridor which we could film our actress, Miranda walking down. We used this narrow corridor to make it seem like she is on her own, but she isn't because the 'evil' girl is following her. We were able to film practically all the shots because it was so relevant to our plot line.

The final set of filming that we did was outside in the evening. This is because it is dark, which gives a more tense atmosphere as you cant see much and you feel vulnerable. Therefore we felt it was the perfect time to film. Here we filmed all of the outside shots, including all the panning shots and the shot with the shadows. 

Our Storyboards

After we had finished all of our research into making a thriller film and established what we wanted to include, we started to plan our opening title sequence. We created our storyboards so that we had a good idea of what was going to happen. It gave us the opportunity to look over our previous ideas and go over what we wanted to change and what we wanted to include. The storyboards are mostly to guide us while we are filming, they show us the shots that we will film and also tell us what type of shot it is for example mid shot or tracking shot.

•  This is the first page of our opening sequence.
• The first shot is zooming into her eye- we wanted to do this so that it looks like we are going back into her memories.
• We then show photos of the girl as a baby to how she looks today so it gives the impression that she has been a sweet innocent girl throughout her life.
• The next shot shows the production company which we had to make up.
• We then followed on from this with a slow panning shot of a building to give the impression that the girl is in danger and is looking around at her surroundings to see if there is anything there.

•  The name of our film is displayed, 'TORTURED'. We chose this title because it has a lot of relevance to our plot line. This is because the main character is being forced in to doings things she doesn't want to do such as cutting and therefore torturing herself.   
• The action then cuts to a  tracking shot which is following two shadows. The one in front looks back on the shadow behind to give the impression that she is being followed and in danger.
• Next, the Directors names are shown.
• There is another, slightly faster panning shot of another building.
• The names of the actors in our opening sequence are shown.
• We then see feet walking towards the camera in the dark, and a dimly lit light is lighting the pathway. This gives the impression that she is vulnerable and exposed because she is alone.

•  There is a long shot of the girl opening the door and going into the room. 
• The action cuts to a mid shot of the girl coming to a mirror, she peers as she thinks she has seen something and quickly turns around. There is nothing there. We were inspired by the film 'Mirrors' to do this shot and it signifies the idea that someone is watching her.
• There is a long shot of a hooded figure watching the girl from aside. This allows the audience to assume that this figure has been following her and this is what made her feel like she was being watched. We deliberately dressed her in all black because this colour connotes evil.
• There is then a tracking shot of the girls feet walking down a narrow corridor. This shot cross-cuts with the next shot which is also a tracking shot of the girl walking towards a picture and you are looking at her reflection. You then see the hooded figure behind her. She looks around and the figure is gone. We used cross-cutting because we thought just having the shot of her reflection in the picture would be too boring as it is too long. Cross-cutting allowed us to break it down. 
• The person responsible for the screenplay and the director of photography's name appears.

•  A long shot of the girl walking into a toilet cubicle is shown. She shuts the door and there is nobody else in there. This could symbolise her desire to shut the world out. 
• We then see the girl inside the toilet looking in the mirror in the dark with a light shining on her. This gives her face a sinister glow and promote the theme of possession, that the hooded figure has taken over her.
• We then see a close up of the hooded figure and we can't see her face. It is almost like they haven't got a identity and this creates a sinister atmosphere.
• The action then cuts to who edited the film.
• There is then a mid shot and the girl comes out of the toilet with smudged makeup and a 'REBEL' t-shirt on. The girl has completely changed her personality and appearance as now she is bad. 
• After the girl is gone, we see the hooded figure was inside the toilet 'influencing' her. This shows how easy it is for people to influence your decisions in life.

• We the see of a mid shot of the girl looking into a mirror. The hooded figure is behind her in the toilet cubicle. This shows that despite her change in character, the hooded figure is still influencing her and she can't get rid of them.
• The make-up supervisor and hair stylist's name is shown.
• We then see an extreme close up of an arm being cut with a knife, forming the word 'HELP' in a black and white shot. It is the girl's arm. This shows that the sweet, innocent girl is still within and is trying to break out and get help.
• In another black and white shot the blood is washed away down the sink. We were inspired by the film 'Psycho' to do this shot as the film is in black and white and in the famous 'shower scene' after the woman has been murdered, the blood is washed down the sink.
• The action then cuts to a shot showing the name of the person responsible for the music.
• There is then a close up of the girl with smudged makeup on. The camera then zooms into this shot slightly, almost replicating the beginning shot. This shows the audience how much she has changed. This cross-cuts with a mid-shot of the hooded figure with the knife. It is almost like she is admiring her handy-work as she inspects the blood-covered knife. 

Our Story and Idea

Our story and idea have developed from lots of research into finding the perfect opening sequence for what we want to convey to our audience. We wanted to create something that we are all proud of, so we have put a lot of work into making it as good as it can be. We have done a lot of research into different opening sequences to see the layout of other film titles, the design of the backdrop, the colours used and how the titles move across the screen and also what order the titles appear in. Looking at all of the different film opening sequences has been fascinating to see all the different ideas, and we have taken inspiration from lots of different films but then have tried to interpret the ideas in our own way and then include it into our own opening sequence. 

Our key inspiration came from the film 'Mirrors'. We liked the story line a lot, the idea of the people in the mirrors not doing what the people who were looking into them were doing and the overall plot appealed to us. We thought that this idea was perfect for the thriller genre as the thought that your reflection might do something different to you is very creepy and disturbing. We took inspiration from the story and it continued to give us inspiration as to what our opening sequence plot would be about. The opening sequence to 'Skyfall'  gave us also a lot more inspiration, however, it wasn't the plot line to the film that we liked, it was the actual titles. We loved the dreamlike quality that it had, and the way that it zoomed into Bond's eye. This contributed massively to our idea of what we wanted our opening titles to look like. As well as looking at films to gain inspiration we also looked at music videos, which we found very helpful. If there were any particular shots that we liked we looked at them and analysed them and discussed how we could incorporate them into our work. We looked at 'Perfect' by P!nk and 'Mirrors' by Natalia Kills. These videos we analysed closely and there were lots of different themes and shots that we liked and wanted to include in our video. We also looked at scenes from films that we could use and found one from the 'Black Swan'. We really liked the expression on Nina's face when she sees her reflection scratching her back and she isn't. She has a look of pure horror on her face and we wanted to incorporate this into our opening sequence.  

Our age rating that we are setting our film as is age 15. After the research that we did into Film Classification Guidelines we came to the decision that we wanted our film to be accessible to a wide audience range. With the rating fifteen it still enabled us to use strong violence, frequent strong language, portrayals of sexual activity, strong verbal references to sex, sexual nudity, brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references, discriminatory language of behaviour and drug taking. We felt that this age rating did not restrict us from showing any content that we wanted to show meaning we still had the freedom to do what we wanted. The age rating 15 means that anyone below this age we feel that our film may be inappropriate for and so setting this age means that people under this age would not enjoy it but over this age would more likely.

After all of our research we came up with our idea and decided on what we wanted our story to be about. Our idea is to have one lead female character acted by our friend Miranda. She will be playing the part of a young innocent girl who is being influenced by an 'evil' girl played by our other friend Amy. We will try and incorporate both the side of the girl who has almost been taken over by this 'evil' girl and also the girl that she used to be as she was before. Our aim is to place ideas into the audiences mind and also creating the backstory and setting the plot line to the rest of the film.

Our Potential Target Audience Questionare

1.   What is your favourite film genre to watch? 

2.   What period in time would you prefer a film to be set in?

3.   Do you prefer thriller films that are easy to follow or that are complex?

4.   Who is your favourite actor that is associated with the Thriller genre?

5.   Who is your favourite actress that is associated with the Thriller genre?

6.   What is your all time favourite Thriller film?

7.    In your opinion, who is the best director of a Thriller film

8.   What is your preferred Thriller sub-genre? E.g. Horror Thriller, Religious Thriller, Action Thriller…

9.   What music do you think you would be likely to hear in a thriller film? 

10.  Do you think opening sequences are more effective with actors in or with just the titles and a simple backdrop?

  

Answers to the Questionnaire

1) Two people said animation, six people said thriller, four people said comedy, two people said drama, two people said science fiction and       two people said action.

2) One person said the past, fourteen people said the present and three people said the future.

3) Twelve people said complex and six people said easy to follow.

4) Two people said Will Smith, two people said Matt Damon, one person said Vincent Price, two people said Liam Neeson, three people said     Tom Cruise, one person said Alex Petifer, one person said Kevin Spacey, two people said Morgan Freeman, one person said Woody             Harrolson, three people said Anthony Hopkins and one person said Cary Grant.

 5) One person said Sigourney Weaver, two people said Angelina Jolie, one person said Tippi Hedren, one person said Maggie Grace, one          person said Uma Therman, one person said Genna Davis, three people said Jodie Foster, two people said Naomi Watts, one person said      Susan Sarandon, two people said Dame Judy Dench, one person said Gwyneth Paltrow, one person said Jamie Lee Curtis and one              person said Glenn Close.

6) One person said 'After Earth', one person said 'The Talented Mr. Ripley', one person said 'The Birds', two people said 'Taken', one person       said 'Bourne Identity', one person said 'Jack Reacher', two people said 'The Impossible', one person said 'Sleeping With The Enemy', one       person said 'The Fugitive', two people said 'Se7en' ,one person said 'Heat', two people said 'The Silence of the Lambs', one person said         'North by Northwest' and one person said 'Fatal Attraction'.

  

7) One person said Steven Spielberg, one person said Anthony Minghella, three people said Alfred Hitchcock, one person said Pierre Morel,     three people said Sir Ridley Scott, two people said Juan Antonio Bayona, one person said Joseph Ruben, two people said David Fincher,     one person said Tony Scott and three people said Jonathan Demme.  

8) Eleven people said action thriller, four people said horror thriller, two people said psychological thriller and one person said crime thriller.

9) Nine people said loud, four people said quiet, fourteen people said fast paced, six people said slow paced, ten people said aggressive and    violent and two people said soft and gentle.

10) Thirteen people said titles and simple backdrop and five people said actors.

Analysis of our questionnaire

We did thorough research into what type of thrillers the public like as we want our opening sequence to be as good as possible. We compiled a questionnaire and gave it out to eighteen people to fill in. This is because it is important for us to know what people like and want to see in a thriller film because then we can give them what they want and our thriller film is more likely to be a success.

The answers to the first question show that people like science fiction, comedy and action. Therefore, we could try to include aspects of these if we were taking our film further. Comedy in our film might be slightly challenging to include because thrillers are full of suspense and do not easily lend themselves to the inclusion of light-hearted moments, but we could consider adding some amusing sections into it. For example we might use comedy to provide some light relief after a particularly  frightening or thrilling section. Finding out about favourite thriller film actors and actresses was interesting for me because I looked on YouTube at clips of examples of thriller movies each actor and actress that was mentioned in my questionnaire had been in. Many different actors and actresses were named by those answering the questionnaire and this shows what a large and varied genre the thriller genre is. From the different film directors that we were given I looked at clips of their work and we tried to see what they include in their filming and interpreted it so that we could use it as inspiration for our opening sequence. 

I was also interested to look at what sub-genres of thrillers appeal to the majority of people in my questionnaire because we could look at them and see if we could make our film fit into this subgenre and give it a wider appeal. Action thriller is the most popular sub-genre. Aspects of this subgenre are easy to include in our thriller film because we just need to have certain key features such as props. We used the information about peoples' favourite  thriller films to look at their title sequences for inspiration for our film. 

From the question about the plot line it is shown that people mostly like complex plot lines because they have to pay attention so that they don't miss any vital information. This will make the audience engage more with the film and make them more susceptible to the anticipation and suspense. Therefore we tried to make our opening sequence complex by not giving the audience too much information about the story line and making it possible to interpret the story line in a number of different ways. From the answers given to the questionnaire, it is also very obvious that people prefer films set in the present day,  and this is probably because people find it easier to engage with the characters and form a relationship with them as they can relate to their situation. The next most popular answer was that people like films to be set in the future although this was noticeably less popular. It may be that this would give the audience the possibility of a glimpse into their own future. It is also clear that people prefer the title sequence to be against a simple backdrop because this is more striking. We also chose our backdrop to be straightforward so that it doesn't give too much  away. However although most people said that they did not want to see actors in the title sequence, we decided to include them as a way of introducing them to the audience at the beginning of the film.

Finally one question was about music, this was important to us because the music must fit perfectly with our opening titles. Music in a film allows the scene to be set and shows the characters feelings and mood. Music can also be used as a tool to build up suspense with and is often used in thriller films. From our research people were mostly evenly spread over the answers we provided with some in favour of certain music such as fast paced and aggressive and violent music being used in thriller films.
We will take all of these results into consideration whilst we make our film and plan it.