INIT

IAL I

DEAS

BY

AM

BE

R B

US

H

GENRE

Action

Romance

Comedy

Horror

Thriller

Western

Sci-fi

Crime

My chosen genre for my film opening is horror, I have chosen this because I have interest in these films and would like to do further research into it.

HORROR FILMS

The Grudge

Woman in Black

Nightmare in Elm Street

Drag Me to Hell

CONVENTIONS

Unsettle you - through the plot, mise-en-scène.

Scary music – non-diegetic sound will be used to scare the audience.

Usually fades to black are used in scary films and before the film starts.

Scary setting – shown through the weather which will usually be stormy or rainy with fog and with dark lighting, a typical example is an establishing shot of a scary building at night.

WHAT AN OPENING OF THE FILM DOES

Establishes the characters

Music

Credits

Establishes the setting of the film

The woman in black establishes this room that has a significance in the film.

DIFFERENCES

Watching different film openings of the horror genre showed not only conventions but also some differences between them.

Not all the film openings had music, personally I would have music in my film opening as I find it more engaging to watch.

The credits were not always in the film opening.

In certain films there is no dialogue between characters or any speech, for example in the Woman in Black there is just music playing. This gives more mystery to the film and I like this way of opening a film.

The amount of the plot that is revealed is different for each film, I find the ones that reveal more grab the audiences attention quicker but personally, to keep the audience to watch the film I think only little bits of the plot should be revealed in the film opening, for example in Se7en there is just titles, the only images we see are books and hands moving objects around.