We looked at various film openings at the start to get different ideas and see the conventions of thriller films. We developed those ideas in to our opening and this is how…
Title of the film
The title of the film is ‘The stalker’. Our reasons for choosing this name is because it is a simple name and it tells you a little bit about the narrative of the film but not too much. For example the film ‘Se7en’ is called Se7en because they deal with se7en deadly sins but do not mention how they do it. Similarly, we have used this as our film is called ‘The stalker’, but it doesn’t let the audience know about how she stalks the girl or who she even stalks. We have used different font for the actual title of ‘The Stalker’ to the other titles in the title sequence, which gives it a different effect.
Setting/ location
We decided to shoot the most dominant scene in the whole opening in the photography dark room. The reason for this was because this is the one scene in which the stalker is shown as an actual stalker, stalking the victim without her knowing. We chose this location as it shows her going in to this room, where she is away from everyone and it is just her and the victims pictures that she takes and develops alone, making her feel as if she is more closer to her. Furthermore, having a dark setting is a convention of a thriller film therefore we have developed it in to ours.
Costumes and props
For the costumes, the victim was dressed as a casual type of girl. We challenged the convention of having the stalker wear dark clothing; this is usually a convention in thriller films but we did not use it. The stalker was not wearing dark clothing even though this is usually a convention in thriller movies and she was also dressed casual to look normal to everyone else, just like the nanny in ‘The hand that rocked the cradle’ was dressed.
We used a number of different props which included, the red tint for the dark room, the pictures to put up, the props used by the victim in the pictures such as a phone and book, the clock, the computer and the gloves.
Camera work and editing
In the opening of our film, we aimed to use different types of shots. Originally we weren’t going to show the stalkers face, however, we later decided that we had to other wise there would be too many of the same types of shots, for example, point of view shots. Therefore, we used shots such as tracking shots, close ups, mid shots and panning shots. This was because in the film openings we saw, they used a range of shots and we developed it in to our film opening.
Title font and style
The title font and style is placed on a black background with white font. We have done this because it reflects the good vs bad in thriller films, as white reflects ‘good’ and black is the ‘bad’. While doing product research in the beginning of the project, we found that a lot of thriller films such as ‘Se7en’ use white font against a black background in the trailer, therefore taking that in mind, we decided to use it in our opening also.
Story and how the opening sets it up
One of the shots that opens the film is the one of the stalker on the computer and on the screen it says ‘I WANT HER’ and is repeated on the whole page. This shot is significant as it introduces her as the stalker and she wants this other girl. We decided to have a voice over of the stalker in the beginning so it introduces the film so the audience aware of how much the stalker wants the victim as she says ‘I needed her, I wanted her’, she also stresses on some words which indicates her emotions and how determined she is to have the girl.
Genre and how the opening suggest it
Our opening suggests that this is a thriller film as it starts of with very mysterious music. Although, in the product research I looked at ‘The hand that rocks the cradle’. The non diegetic sound used in the opening was firstly was quite smooth happy orchestral music but as another character was introduced riding in the neighborhood on the bike in dark clothing, the music changed tone and got relatively tense. We somewhat used this in our opening as we had the same music playing in the title sequence but as soon as the title of the film ‘The Stalker’ comes up, we hear a loud sound and then the stalker appears on screen, this suggests that that character may be the ‘bad’ one.
How characters are introduced
In the opening sequence we only see two characters which symbolises that these two are the main characters. The other characters would have been seen later on in the film. The first character to be introduced is the stalker, she is introduced as a psychotic person as she has typed up she ‘wants’ the girl on her computer. She then goes to her dark room where we see she has taken pictures of this girl she is stalking and shows a very psychotic side to the character. The other character introduced is the victim who is being stalked. She on the other hand is introduced as someone who is very naïve and you feel sorry for her.
Special effects
We used special effects such as jump cuts in the opening sequence. This was when the stalker was walking in the dark room and thinking about the past. The reasons why these were used are so that the audience can see the past and how the stalker used to stalk the victim then and how she has still not got over her. We chose to have those shots in black and white to show the past.
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