The purpose of an opening sequence is to establish the genre of the film but sometimes to

introduce key elements of the narrative to the audience watching the film. An example of

how key elements are introduced through the opening sequence is Panic Room. Panic

Room written by David Keopp and directed by David Fincher, is a thriller that was created in 2002. The first shot of the opening sequence is an establishing shot of a city skyline where

we can see the urban metropolis , immediately we can see text over the clip of film ,

showing the audience who has produced the film, where as compared to my opening

sequence where in the first shot is of some spinning trees in a bleak atmosphere, the

impression that the mise en scene is giving off is that the trees give a sense of

interpretation as it is an unknown location that has a presence of mystery that surrounds it.

Panic Room’s first shot of the city, the is nothing unusual about this location as it a metropolis skyline which is beautiful to look at and it lulls the audience into a sense of security which will be later on destroyed through the narrative.

In our opening sequence straightaway the audience in thrown into a state of desperation due to the rotating camera shots of the forest, paired with the editing to make the shot look extremely creepy , we are introducing the audience to a future location within the film that they are unaware of.

The opening of Panic Room consists of establishing shots of a city, the shots show the everyday lives of the city’s inhabitants going on with their everyday lives. From these shots of the opening sequence we are not able to clearly establish the genre of the film. This is where music is important because the music from Panic Room is very dramatic and it builds up, this is used to build the required atmosphere for a thriller genre. In my opening sequence my group had a hard time deciding what piece of music to use in the opening sequence, ultimately after receiving feedback from a focus group, we changed the music to Possibility by Lykke Li and Lindsey Stirling and Pentatonix's cover of Radioactive. We found that Lindsey Stirling andPentatonix’s version of Radioactive was the best for our opening scene as it had a great instrumental from a violinist, the instrumental builds a certain expectation for the opening sequence and as our opening sequence finished just as the instrumental is reaching the bridge it entrances the audience in to want to watch more. Panic Room’s music is very dramatic as throughout the opening sequence it builds through the tempo speeding up and the pitch increasing.

As Panic Room’s opening sequence

concludes there is a voiceover in the

background, we are still not introduced to

any characters but we hear some dialogue,

this intrigues the audience to listen to see

what is going on.

In our opening sequence we challenge the conventions that

Panic Room use in their opening sequence as we yet to have

speech in our opening sequence. The closest our opening

sequence comes to having dialogue within the sequence is a

frustrated sound Sabrina makes at the end of the scene. We

did not want to include masses of dialogue within our opening

sequence as we wanted to keep the aura of mystery

surrounding the narrative as we wanted to play with the

conventions of the thriller genre.

Through my opening sequence we wanted to establish character through the

use of props/iconography, setting, costume and even genre.

We were able to establish our female lead’s (Sabrina) character through her

choice of two costumes. We had Sabrina wear a red dress for the majority of

the filming as we wanted to use the colour red to symbolise the danger

Sabrina posed to the other characters through her obsession. Her other

costume in opening scene contrasted with her original costume as it was

extremely mundane, the costume is used to lull the audience to believe she is

normal. Compared to Panic Room where there is no characters within the

opening sequence we have no understanding or prior knowledge to the

character’s characteristics, the only ‘teaser’ we receive is a character talking

towards the end of the opening sequence.

The choice of the red dress for the costume is to play

with the conventions of a thriller as it is suggesting to the

audience subliminally that this character has an aspect

of danger around her and the audience should be wary

of her. The decision to use the colour red was for the

purpose of tricking the audience as later on in the film

we will see that the red dress will be a significant in the

narrative.

By us using mundane looking clothes in the opening

scene we are conveying to the audience that Sabrina

is a normal person and at this stage of the narrative this

will be before she goes under the transition to her

psycho persona.

The directors of Panic Room played with the conventions of an opening by only using establishing

shots for the opening sequence, we are only able to

see the setting used within the narrative to establish

characterisation. Even with this we are only able to

establish the character’s location and home. This is

good and bad because we are left in the dark to

speculate the characters’ but it bad because it is

extremely simple and may bore the audience. The

opening sequence does not really convey the codes

and conventions of a thriller opening sequence

through the setting as we only view shots of a city.

Whereas if you compare my opening sequence we

are able to associate the already identified

character with the locations filmed. We can see

Sabrina in a house, we can associate this setting as

Sabrina’s house. The trees in the forest we can

associate as a local hangout as our character is

located in the location. The locations we use are very

simplistic as they are everyday locations, in Panic

Room the locations in the opening sequence is too big and populated.

In my opening sequence we had originally planned

on having the main focus on the props like in Se7en,

in Se7en props played a huge part as they helped characterise the main character as they showed his

insanity.

We wanted our opening sequence to be similar to this

so we made sure we incorporated a lot of props that

could be associated with Sabrina later on in the

narrative. As our main character is female, the props

used in the opening sequence will be more feminine.

We chose use more feminine props because we want

to make sure the props used can easily characterise

Sabrina. We want the props to show Sabrina’s childish

side as the props consisted of teddy bears, china dolls

and her scribbling out pictures of Ben and Hannah.

Sabrina

We chose to use Sabrina in our opening sequence as

she fitted the creepy look with her dark long hair. We

chose Sabrina to be our main antagonist due to the

fact that her hair and small stature could be likened to

the girl from the grudge and the ring. We thought that

the audience may react to our choice of antagonist

because if costumed correctly Sabrina would be able

to pull of the look of the ring girl, she should be able to

install a sense of fear when she looks like this and this

will hopefully link in to the codes and conventions of a

thriller opening sequence. Also as Sabrina is of Pilipino

descent she will be able to look like one of these other

antagonists as they always seem to be from oriental

descent. Because Sabrina is naturally pretty we did

not want her to wear make up as we wanted

empathise on her natural beauty also due to the fact

that our target audience is of a young age we did not

want our characters to look older than our specific

target audiences so made sure she stays away from

make up with her costumes. We wanted our audience

to react to Sabrina in two different ways , the one

where Sabrina is a psychopath and obsessed with Ben

and normal Sabrina that some of the audience would

be able to relate to, the desperation and insecurities

of being a teenager looking for love. Sabrina’s

character will be from a suburban background of a

middle class status, but we will not know her actual

back story, there will be a sense of mystery that

surrounds Sabrina’s character.

Ben

We decided to use Ben in our opening sequence as Sabrina’s love obsession

, Ben’s role in Beautiful Psycho is to be the protagonist who ultimately saves

the day and is Sabrina’s demise. We chose Ben because of the whole guy

next door look, from the way he dressed in smart casual trousers and casual

hoodies. We thought his look was perfect for the role as he was a normal guy

who would attract a woman. His style is a typical style of a teenager of 2013

with the smart slacks and hoodie, culturally his style is common throughout

today’s society, Ben is an 17 year old man who lives in England and is from a

middle class background. Ben is a perfect example of the average male, he

has everything going for him, unlike normal movie heart throbs, Ben will be

more down to earth making it easier for our audience to have more of a

connection to with him, so the audience will be able to make the

connection with him being the protagonist easier.

Hannah’s character is portrayed to be the typical girl

next door that everyone will be able to associate as a

protagonist as she will be a victim to Sabrina’s obsession

with Ben but unlike other thriller films there will not be a

horrid fate that awaits her. We plan on having Hannah

overcome the problems she faces to make the audience

empathise with her character. The audience should react

to Hannah’s character by feeling sorry for her and the

situation she has been stuck in and that her boyfriend is

being stalked by a psycho. She will typically look like a

high fashioned young adult relating her to our young

audience as they will be able to aspire to be dressed like

herself. Hannah is a typical English rose with her colouring

and her demeanour, her hairstyle is modern and up to

date. All of this helps the audience reflect themselves on

Hannah’s character as culturally the majority of the

audience will be the same age as Hannah’s character.

As the budget we had to produce and create our film we were unable to

use big international production companies, we had to look for a

production company closer to home. As our film is an independent British

film, we decided to go with a national distributing company instead of a

larger scale institution. A film distributor is a company or individual

responsible for the marketing of a film. From the research I had conducted

prior on my blog, I decided that the distributing company I was going to

use for my opening sequence was Vertigo Films as they are a rising movie

distributing company as it was only created in 2002. I wanted to use the

company because they are fast, gaining a wider portfolio of films and I

would like my film to be produced by them as well. I have shown in our

opening sequence the choice to use Vertigo Films by having their logo at

the beginning of our opening sequence so our audience knows our choice

of distributer. We are giving Vertigo Films credit for the production of the

film by using their logo and promoting their name by doing this.

The target audience to Beautiful Psycho target audience is 18-25 females and

males. We decided to make it for both genders because we believed that

because the narrative followed two different characters, one male, and one

female, it would be appropriate for the film to be targeted for both male and

female.

The BBFC is a crucial part of the film industry in the United Kingdom as it is the

classification system we use to classify the age rating for films and some video

games.

We as a group needed to decide what we were going to rate our opening

sequence by following the guidelines of the BBFC, after looking over the

classifications of the BBFC we decided that the best age certificate for our

opening sequence was an 18. Without conducting research we assumed that

our rating should be an 15 due to the fact there was some blood and intention

of violence, but from further research we did in fact discover this rating would no

be acceptable for our opening sequence.

Here is the official regulations from the BBFC website:

What sort of issues might I find in an 18 film or DVD?

18 works are for adults and can contain strong issues such as:

very strong violence

frequent strong language (eg ‘f***’) and/or very strong language (eg ‘c***’)

strong portrayals of sexual activity

scenes of sexual violence

strong horror

strong blood and gore

real sex (in some circumstances)

discriminatory language and behaviour

In our opening sequence we do not plan on using the majority of these

classifications because what would be the point? If the opening sequence was

to include all of these exciting factors there would be no point in having a film as

the majority of these aspects would be included in the opening sequence. In

reality the opening sequence only contains content that would be acceptable

for the rating of a 12, but because we have to consider that the rating is for the

entire film not just our opening sequence, we need o take into account the

codes and conventions of a typical thriller film. Because it is a thriller we would

be including some kind of sex scene that would lead to our female lead’s

obsession, we would have strong blood and gore due to the fact we have a

sub-genre of horror, so we plan on having murder and mutilations within our

opening sequence.

How much strong language is there in an 18?

There is no limit on the number of uses of strong (eg ‘f***’) or even

very strong language (eg ‘c***’) which can be passed at 18. Uses

could be aggressive, directed, frequent or accompanied by strong

violence.

In our opening sequence we do not plan on having any dialogue so

this does not apply to our opening sequence but we do plan on

using a few swear words within the film but only when characters are distressed because ‘Beautiful Psycho’ is aimed towards a female

audience seeing as the narrative is about a woman’s obsession with

a man. We do not plan on using extremely strong language within

our film and opening sequence as women are often more refined

with the elocution and their vocabulary so we do not plan using this language as it may be off putting towards our target audience of

females.

What about discriminatory or offensive terms?

There may be racist, homophobic or other discriminatory language at 18, and the work could explore themes relating to this.

Though a work as a whole must not be in breach of any relevant

legislation, it is possible for discriminatory language or themes to be

the main focus of the work, and for main characters to engage in

discriminatory behaviour.

We do not plan on using any discriminatory language within our film

or opening sequence like racist or homophobic as we do not face

any of these issues within our narrative, if our genre was a horror or

drama this would be more common as they often face issues like

this.

How much sex and nudity is allowed at 18?

There can be strong and detailed portrayals of sex at 18, including full nudity. There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational

context. Very strong, crude and explicit sex references are permitted at

18. An 18 film or DVD might also contain depictions of real sex if it is

justified by context, as long as the film or DVD is not a sex work.

We plan on having a mild sex scene within our movie, nothing to graphic

as it would not fit into our narrative. The use of the sex scene in our film

would probably suit the rating of a 15 as we do not plan on having a

strong and crude sex scene. This would be completely irrelevant for our

opening sequence as it would confuse our audience if a sex scene

came on, it does not fit in with the genre. If it was a rom-com it would work better, take Bridesmaids for example, the opening sequence is a

comical sex scene that automatically makes the audience feel

uncomfortable, this would fit in with codes and conventions of a rom-

com.

Can there be strong violence?

Yes, at 18 violence can be strong and be portrayed with strong detail. There

may even be dwelling on the infliction of pain or injury, or scenes of strong

sadistic or sexual violence. The strongest gory images are permitted at this

category.

In our opening sequence we do not plan on having an violence, as we are

only establishing the narrative and usually in a thriller film, directors try to

convey a sense of mystery, often opening sequence do not make sense but

have some sort of iconography that relates to later on in the film. We will

probably have some sadistic violence later on in the narrative but not in our

opening sequence.

What about horror works?

The strongest horror works are passed at 18, they may contain strong horror,

gore or sustained threat and menace which exceeds the boundaries of 15.

As our opening sequence/film is a thriller but has a sub-genre of a thriller we

are going to include aspect of a horror like the obsession of a woman that

leads to death.

Genre is extremely important when you are making any media product, you have to consider all of the codes and conventions of the specific genre. My opening sequence manipulates the thriller genre’s conventions to its advantage. Before we received feedback on our opening sequence, our original plan was for us to scare the audience by building up a thrilling atmosphere through the conventions of sound, we introduced a thrilling soundtrack that built the atmosphere.

In the early stages of production we conducted some research to do the naming of the film products and also making some of our target audience take part in a quick survey to determine what idea the preferred.

Here is our tally we created to see which idea the audience preferred from this data I was able to create a bar chart.

Ideas

Idea 1

Idea 2

Idea 3

This pie chart shows that the most popular idea from the selection of three was the third idea.

I believe the third idea was the most popular for our target audience as it contains the most aspects of a thriller genre as a cloud of mystery was present within the idea, we planned on using lots of shots of props so we would not see the character as much, fitting in with codes and conventions of a thriller as the main focus is on the sound as this is where the atmosphere is built from.

After we had created our opening sequence for the first time we received

feedback from our teachers we are group decided to conduct a focus

group and ask them what they thought of our opening sequence? You

can see this work on my blog here:

http://maddisonnicolepage.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/feedback/

From before I underwent this process of coursework, I think unfortunately I did

not have a wide understanding of the technologies that were available to me,

however I did have some understanding of construction process as I had

created a media trailer for a fantasy film the previous year on Sony Vegas. I

faced a few problems using this software as we encountered an error quite a few

times that ended up closing the program and loosing all the work we had done.

We conducted research as the basis on creating an opening sequence, we

decided ultimately that we wanted to create a thriller opening sequence so our

group knew to research thrillers and make sure our research consisted heavily on

thriller opening sequence. We commenced researched on two famous opening

sequences directors (Kyle Cooper, Saul Bass) we also analysed Laurent Kelly’s

‘Importance of opening sequences’ and we were able to pick out key points from

his critical essay. Also we watched two opening sequences and analysed what the

opening sequences were like and how the fitted in with the mise en scene and

codes and conventions of a thriller opening sequence.

In our planning stage of the opening sequence we had to scout out areas that we

found were appropriate for our filming locations, keeping in with the mise en scene of

the thriller genre. We found a creepy trail like forest round the lake. We also decided

to use two of our bedrooms because we did not want to have too complex locations

to distract away from the narrative. We also had to conduct health and safety checks

on all our locations to make sure it was completely safe for our actors and so we were

prepared for an emergency. Other aspects of planning included creating a

storyboard and a script so we had a guideline to follow when we were filming,

although a lot of our footage was improvised as we found we were able to

experiment more.

I learnt how to use some new technology through the planning stage of the

coursework was how to use the blogging website, as although the concept is pretty

easy to understand, we learnt more on how we blogged the post and how we were

able to insert multimedia into the blog posts.

Construction was where I was introduced to new aspects of the editing process as we

were able to experiment with different editing techniques like enhancing the colour

red in our clips with use of pure red screen. We were also able to use effects like darker

less contrast that enabled us to edit the clip to make it look like it was darker than it

actually was, giving off the effect f it being night time.

Some problems we faced with using Sony Vegas was that if you had too many clips

being uploaded at one time Vegas would crash and delete all of your work. I found

that the solution to this was to just add the clips we needed and delete the ones we

didn't need.

The addition of music was a little tricky because we didn't want the music to just end

and not make sense, so with the new tracks we added we edited it to make sure that it

ended at the end of the bridge in the song and then made sure that the second track

faded in before the first track had ended, making the music flow seamlessly. We only

used diegetic sound for our sound effects in our opening sequence and this consisted

of Sabrina typing on a laptop, we used the diegetic sound because it synced with the

movements Sabrina was doing.

We also added into the opening sequence portals transitions for the titles, we chose to

use portals because the colour matched our theme of red and also it was a quirky way

of breaking up the scenes.

Evaluating my opening sequence

We gathered a focus group and showed them our opening

sequence and we were able to receive a wide range of feedback so

we could improve our opening sequence. I have previously stated

the feedback we received in question 5.

Also we received some feedback off YouTube after uploading the

video, it was good to be able to receive feedback off the web as

they would not be biased towards our work.

Receiving the feedback

was good as we were

experimenting with well

known technology on

YouTube and uploading

our constructed work onto

the internet, we were

exposing ourselves to

potentially mean

feedback, but we would of

took this criticism to heart

due to the fact everyone is

entitled to their opinion .

When we first started this piece of coursework and we filmed our preliminary

task I was quite wary what was up ahead because some of the things we did

at the time I was unsure about some of the camera angles like the 180 degree

rule. But after completing the task it made filming our actual opening

sequence a lot more easier. From the preliminary task I was able to get back

into the filming process as I had got a little rusty as I hadn't filmed in ages. Also

where we filmed the lighting was perfect as it was day time and there was

artificial lights. The weaknesses of the preliminary task was that we had

continuity errors like filming the same scene in two completely different

locations . The strengths of the preliminary task was that from the use of the

tripod it kept the camera shots nice and steady.

From our preliminary task we were able to establish as a group what not to

do and what to do whilst filming our opening sequence. We learnt that for

our opening sequence which was thriller that we should film the majority of

the film clips free hand to give the films a more creepy effect. We wanted to

film at night for the majority of the clips but we faced a dilemma of trying to

organise all of our crew and actors together to film. Also we faced the

problem that our equipment was not like the equipment many other

directors used, that costs more than a thousand pounds. We were using a

Sony handheld camcorder. We had to factor in the disadvantage that our

clips were not going to be of the same standard of Steven Spielberg’s, but

we made do with what equipment we had and we were able to , in post

production, add effects to edit the film clips we had look like it was shot a

night. When it had in fact been shot in the middle of the day.

The music that we used in our opening sequence was always a huge issue within

our group due to the fact that we all had different tastes and different ideas to

what we should have in our opening sequence. We had to learn as a group to

make compromises on decision making we had to make sure that we always

went for the majority vote as this was the fairest way for decision making. Overall

we had five different choices for music but after receiving feedback we stuck to

two and we are very happy now with our decision. I think the majority decision

making helped us with our progression as we were able to make sure everyone’s

opinions were heard and we all had input.

Although making the opening sequence was extremely fun we did have quite a

few hardships whilst in the planning and construction process. The issue was, how

were we going to create a two minute opening sequence for a narrative that

was meant to span over a period 90 minutes? In our group we had to make sure

that we had clearly thought about the rough outline of the narrative or

otherwise we would be like headless chickens. If we compare my opening

sequence to my preliminary task, you are able to see the difference from the

preliminary that is completely improvised on the spot and to my opening

sequence which has a whole narrative and has to entice the audience in to

watching the rest of the film from the opening sequence. As I mentioned earlier

the opening sequence is sometimes used to establish the genre of the film but

also to show the audience key events that take place in the narrative.

These parts of my

opening

sequence , even if

they do not look

like it, are

important parts of

the narrative. They

tell the story of

what is to come

later on in the

narrative, we had

to think ahead

whilst planning

these scenes so

we knew why the

scenes would be

important later on.

Our preliminary task

had no meaning

apart from getting us

used to filming with

the cameras, as you

can see from the

screenshots that the

actors are very

hesitant to what they

needed to say or do.

This is where our

opening sequence

had more strengths

than the preliminary .