Titles of our thriller opening

Distributor - Momentum pictures
Company Logo
Crossfire Productions Presents
A Snehal Khimani Film
Rahul Horeesorun
Samir Sarwari
Mind Games
Zack Grenier
Eion Bailey
Matt Mcallney
Casting by - Micheal Dunham
Costume designer - Richard Molloy
Music by - Stephen Cox
Film editor - Janet Fincher
Production designer - Alex O'neil
Director of photography - Philip Bloom
Executive Producer - Andrew Hall
Directed by - Snehal Khimani

Narratives

A narrative is the movies story. There are all kinds of narratives. Theres the linear narative which tell the story from start all the way till the problem is resolved. There is also fractured narrative which is when the story jumps back and forth in time e.g. starting of with a man who then shows his childhood and then jumps fourth and back. You can use flashbacks, voiceovers, multiple perspectives, happy endings. We need narratives to make sense of things, connecting events and making interpretations based on those connections. We contrsuct meaning using our experience of reality and of previous text. When we look at narratives, we examine the conventions of gender, character, form and time and use our knowledge of these conventions to help us interpret the text.

Here are some basic narrative structures that are used in many productions:

Beginning ---> Middle ---> End
Exposition ---> Problem ---> Climax ---> Resolution
A Narrative is needed for humans to make sense of a production (e.g. a film) as we connect events and make interpretations. Narrative's consist of a beginning, middle and end. Todorov's theorey of narrative is made up of 5 stages. These 5 stages are:
1. Equilibrium
2. Disruption
3. Recognition
4. Attempts to repair
5. New equilibrium

Because his theory was thought of in the 20th century, it will be very tedious if every film was to use this structure of narration. Therefore, directors have attempted to rearranged the structure in order to fulfill the wants and needs of the audience.

There are also structuralists, for example, Roland Barthes, who uses narrative codes. This narrative teases the audience by presenting a puzzle or riddle to be solved. Narrative codes can be categorised in the following ways:

• engima code
• symbols and signs
• points of culture reference
• simple description/reproduction

Claude Levi-Strauss was a literary theorist who developed ways of deconstructing narratives. He believed constand  creation of conflict propels narrative. Narratives can only end on a resolution of conflict . The opposition can be visual  or conceptual  and to do with soundtrack (binary opposition; theory of meaning that can be used to look at some of the cultural beliefs built into texts e.g. good vs evil.)

Audience research

For our audience research, we recorded some of the students in our sixth form as they would fit in as a potential target audience. They watched our rough cut of our thriller opening and gave some feedback on what to improve, what went well and also they gave us some information on what they would like to be included in an opening.

Analysis of the opening of Cape Fear

The film begins with a medium shot of a river/ocean oscillating and creating various ripples. The steady flowing of the water is accompanied with a mellow yet uneasy background violin music. There appears to be a considerable amount of light being reflected from the ripples to start off with, which is then gradually replaced with darkness. It is as though the sky is being reflected and the darkness represents the shadows of the gloomy clouds overtaking the sun or even an indication of the transition from day to night. An owl also flys by which emphasises the ambiguity of the opening, leaving the audience with little information to go by. The frame is still focused on the ripples and the audience will notice that the reflections are continually changing eventually into a dark liquid similar to crude oil. This shot blends into the image of an extreme close up of an eye. The eye is dominating, wide open and the remaining blending of the ripples from the previous shots creates a dramatic bulging effect of the eye, grabbing the attention of the audience. Likewise as this scene appears there is a change in the background music from a calmer melody to a sudden, sharp, loud, almost threatening orchestra. This intensifies the expression of the eye and builds up the expectation of trouble. Following this, the eye fades back out into the dark crude oil looking reflection from the water and a very vague, quick shot of lower teeth emerges then disappears.

The next shot is a quick faded, close up shot of a mans face looking up in distress followed shortly by an unclear medium shot of a radpidly moving head significantly distorted due to the rippling water faded throughout the scene. This disturbing motion of the head is resemblent of an individual experiencing psychosis or severe psychological impact adding to the genre at hand. The subsequent 30 seconds are disorientated with medium shots of water flowing in different currents and directions along with a 3 second shot of a mans silhouette, which conveys a very suspicious, mysterious context. The water scene continues but this time the reflection of a droplet is shown and the colour is overshadowed by a blood red. The connotations of this are blood, maybe even a murder scene. An extreme close up shot of a childs eyes in this same red followed by nightvision view is displayed. The eyes are an important aspect of emotion and this is directly linked to the mental state of a person adding to the psychological thriller genre.

The camera then zooms out of the eyes into a medium shot of the girl standing and all this happens at the same time as the girl begins to speak. It almost looks as though the camera is now steadily revealing information to the audience. Then the audience are taken to a scene of a room which begings with a medium shot slowly moving down and slighlty zooming out then panning to the left and revealing a male working out with his back to the camera, followed by a continuation of the camera zooming out. It seems as though the movement of the camera and the male working out are simultaneous as the camera stops zooming once the man has stopped working out. This effect makes the audience feel as though they are part of the scene. The following scene shows the man leaving his cell and this is captured by the camera almost following the man leave via a combination of long shots, pans and zooms. The final scene shows the man is being freed and the whole prison is viewable through this long shot while the man is walking towards the camera.

Initial idea and summary of plot

The plot of our thriller opening begins with a man (main character) who has psychological issues staring at a fuzzy tv whilst listening to classical music in the background. This is supposed to create some confusion and curiosity in the audiences minds. The room is messy and the curtains have bloods stain on them. The main character has samples of hair from others. This is also part of the mental illness our character has. The opening continues on and ends with the police hunting down the main character and this is shown by cross cutting from the main characters house and environment to the police approaching a house. In the end, the police brake into the wrong house and the opening of our thriller ends here. This is our inital idea that our group has discussed and agreed upon.