Charlie Brooker

QUESTION 1

FORMSOur opening develops a typical opening style formation with integrated titles appearing at the beginning of the footage. We took inspiration from A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984) with integrating the titles from the start.

We decided that putting the titles towards the very beginning would provide our opening sequence with a sense of actuality, in making it appear professional and realistic of a horror film opening.

CONVENTIONSDiscovering that we were an all girl group, we decided to conform to the generic conventions of the ‘final girl’. Therefore, our protagonist was a female and our antagonist was a male. Our plot included the killings of 3 female victims in which is foreseen by our main female character ‘Jane Doe’ within her dream.

We also took inspiration from Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001) in making our main female character have psychological traits which we felt an audience could relate to, as certain individuals within society do have psychological disorders.

We again took inspiration from A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984), as we felt that we could play the female victim accurately and convince an audience that they are watching a realistic horror film opening.

CHARACTERWe used character exposition of the rule of thirds to make our main character seem isolated and alone, adding to our aim of producing a psychological horror opening which highlights abandonment of individuals with such disorders.

We further incorporated Character blocking of the antagonist always being positioned behind the protagonist, in order to communicate that their presence is unknown to the other character and visible to the audience.

We took inspiration of positioning the antagonist behind the protagonist from A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984).

MISE-EN-SCENE

The use of dark suits for the protagonist and antagonist had a specific aim of communicating to the audience that the psychotic murderer is an alter ego of Jane Doe.

We also wanted to convey that Jane is not the stereotypical female teenager, as she doesn’t wear a lot of make up and doesn’t wear promiscuous clothing.

With this, we wanted to show that Jane is different and unique from other girls of her age group and this is why the female characters who get murdered are wearing their own clothes.

ENIGMAEnigma is established as the murderers face isn’t properly revealed, we make sure of this by excluding close up shots in order to make the murderer appear mysterious.

We go onto develop enigma by the use of our chosen locations, of a tunnel, alleyway and park, all in which are conventional of a horror film and add tension with the girls being alone. Some shots are in darkness, the use of low key lighting contributes to a conventional horror look.

We also used a montage for within the dream, taking influence from the film seven (David Fincher, 1995), to connote aspects of a psychological horror.

One of the props we used within our opening was a murder board which displayed all 4 of the girls pictures the murderer targets, along with newspaper clippings to display aspects of psychopathy and relate to our chosen sub-genre of horror (psychological horror).

CAMERA WORK

To make our shots seem much more smoother and professional, we used a track and dolly within the tunnel scenes which secured that our footage wasn’t bumpy or edgy.

We took inspiration from A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984) when deciding to use a tunnel for one of the murders.

We used close up camera angles to display reaction shots of different facial expressions, which are used in many horrors to show fear.

EDITING STYLEWanting our opening to be dramatic and build tension, we thought that using face pace editing would help us achieve this aim. We wanted to use this type of editing in order to give an uneasy effect on the audience, forcing them to feel on edge and curious as to what would happen next if we were to carry our opening on into a film.

Straight after the above shot, the camera sharply cuts to the shot on the right in order to show continuity using different camera angles.

SOUND

Diagetic sound is used throughout the reality shots so that the audience can relate to actual sounds we hear every day (such as car noises).

The sound mix we incorporated conforms to a conventional horror feel, as a sinister track is played throughout the opening with a jingle of bells being heard everytime the murderer appears.

The effect of this is to epitomize the murderer’s presence.

We took inspiration of the sound of the bells being heard everytime the murderer appears from The Uninvited (Guard Brothers, 2009), which illustrated a similar effect everytime the dead mum appeared.

The Uninvited

Clip

We also included a harsh drum beat sound everytime the victims mouths were covered by the murderer as it anchored the actions well.

TYPOGRAPHYThe main title ‘The Foreshadowing’ was positioned within the rule of thirds appearing on the opposite side to the main characters face.

It was coloured in a dark red to add to the stereotypical horror colours to connote blood and death.

We also added a fade out animation so that the title jumps out at the audience, however fading out to the right hand corner of the screen to stick to the rule of thirds style.

VISUAL TECHNIQUES

For the colour of our opening sequence, we wanted the dream to appear more vibrant than reality in order to separate the two and making it clear to the audience to establish the difference.

Dark saturated colours for reality.

Low key lighting to highlight the bright colours within the dream.

To maintain a dream like feel, we added an overlay of the main characters eyes appearing shut over the top of shots with the murderer so that the audience know that it is still a dream.

To maintain a dream like feel, we added an overlay of the main characters eyes appearing shut over the top of shots with the murderer so that the audience know that it is still a dream.