Wednesday, 17 November 2010

Opening sequence

For next week I’m suppose to write about a opening scene of a horror or a thriller that I like. What I’m also is looking for is techniques that my group and I may have the possibility to imply in our opening scene. By looking through a couple of opening title scenes I realized what actually caches my interest in the different scenes and what I find most effective.
The first scene I looked at was the opening scene of “the shining”.
The opening title scene of the shinning was basic if you just look at what is shown in the scene; a car driving along the road and at the same time as the surroundings is shown. But I and my group could never do something like this. What I mean is that the whole opening scene is filmed from a helicopter which we don’t really have a possibility to use.

I didn’t really like this scene even though it was beautiful film because it really didn’t give anything away of the story not even a single character the only thing that is reviled is that time is passing by. The good thing about it is that it makes you curios of where the car is going but not really anything else.

Link: Opening scene, the shining

The next sequence I looked at was one of the ones that I really liked which was the opening scene of “seven”. It really sets you into this creepy mood and the music is one of the best used sounds I think. The sound starts off with this quite background music then small sound bridges of horrifying sounds are added. The graphics is also really well shown and it looks smooth and not disturbing the action and the graphics also likes like a child’s handwriting making it more creepy and realistic.

Through out the whole sequence they are only using extreme close-ups giving away a bit of the story but not anything of the character. This is a great and easy way to get a big impact on your audience and is something that I and my group could use when doing out project. Every little thing that is shown throughout the sequence are giving small clues about a person that is obsessed with different things and you also make a conclusion that he’s going to be the reason for any killings or action in the movie.  This really makes you stay and want to watch the whole movie and that is exactly what I think a opening sequence should be doing.

Link: Opening scene, seven
I looked through many other openings sequences from films as “dead mans shoes”, “twenty eight weeks later” and “final call” the very different from each other and used a lot of different teqniqes to learn from.

But the one I choose to tell about was the opening title scene from a movie called “Ghost ship”. I like this scene because of the totally unexpected things that is about to happened and that the atmosphere is very different from what you expect it to be. Everything is like happy and calm and when then later everybody gets killed it is a kind of chocking.  But what I think is good is that you are in a way not waiting for the action it just comes right away.
I also like that this is actually past time even though you don’t get that right away because after this there is a time difference of maybe teen-twenty years.
Even though they are using techniques as helicopter and so on the kind of close-up shots and shots showing details is great thing we could use for our opening scene. When watching for a great opening scene I’m looking for things that I think is scary but it’s also those kinds of things that make me interested in a movie like teasers, calm and relaxing and a lot of close-up and details shots. A more detailed analyze of ghost ship will also be published.
Link: Opening scen, Ghost ship




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