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.

Analysis of the opening of Silence of the lambs

The film opens with an extreme establishing shot of space and stars. The titles then begin to appear on screen, with the first title appaearing from some stars shapping an O. The film then cuts into a forest simultaneously showing the titles on screen. Dead trees and a misty weather is the setting of the forest creating a negative/depressing mood. There is also sad/eerie non-diegetic sound in the background. We are then shown a long shot of a lady pulling on a rope. Diegetic sound is used at this moment as she is climbing you can hear her panting. As she reaches the top of the hill, a medium shot is shown here. You can see here facial expressions showing a concerned look, looking right then left. She then begins to run through the forest whilst the titles continue to show. She is in a quite setting and she is alone showing that she is quite vulnerbale. There is a close up tracking shot of her running; medium shots of her torso and medium shots of her legs whilst she is running. The music is still being played adding to the tension of the scene. The lady then begins to climb over an obstacle in her way. We can suggest that she is training to become a part of something, maybe a policewoman as she comes face to face with a man working for the FBI.

Analysis of the opening of Memento

The opening of memento begins with a prolonged close up of a mans hand holding a photo of blood from a polaroid camera. There is non-diegetic sounds of an eeire soundtrack which builds up tension for the viewers. The sounds are effective because they represent the event very well. This scene is held for around 10 seconds untill he shakes the photo to reveal the image. It is almost as though he has been frozen in this position, possibly even shocked at what he sees in the photo. On the other hand the delayed time in holding the photo in this fixed position may be related to the development time of the photo to fully appear. However the audience soon notices that as the time continues the photo fades into darkness until it disappears or even returns to the state of when it first comes out of the polaroid. This assumption that the audience is inclines to make is further backed up by the proceeding shots of the photo being inserted back through the camera. During this scene the titles of the film are shown in a contrasting blue colour which stand out against the warm coloured scene (blood and skin) and essentially creates a hot and cold vibe. As the clip continues, a gun, a man being shot and a bullet is shown; that's when the audience realise that the clip is being played in rewind or reverse, showing what happened from the end to the start. At this moment there may be a sense of surprise and enlightment for the audience as this is far from typical cinematography.

We are then shown the male character wearing a suit, who kills someone by shooting at them with a gun. The man then takes a photo of the scene which creates assumptions of who the man could be and his role in the movie. Non diegetic sound follows, with a extreme close up of the man. There is not much light on him as he is looking to the right which creates tension. There is then another extreme close up of the man picking up his keys and then a close up of the man. The lighting remains fairly dark in the room. There are then shots of the furniture in the room and then a medium shot of the man on the bed looking confused.