This starts with an establishing shot which allows the audience to gain an concept of the location, and set the scene. In many horrors the beginning is slow and this is the same idea we’ve done on ours. In the film ‘Silence of the lambs’ it starts with a similar opening.

The lighting is dark which adds mystery, and tension as what is on screen isn’t that clear. This is a convention of a horror. When researching into case studies we found that this was an effect used throughout in shutter island.

Our film opening has many conventions that are similar to a horror film. Many are ones that we had previously analysed or films that 'Dimension Films' have distributed.

Evaluation

This is an over the shoulder act, and we can see from this characters point of view. As we cant see the facial expression it builds up suspense this is often a convention in horrors. The characters identity is kept hidden and they appear more mysterious. This is why we think it works in ours.

This is from the film ‘Halloween’. It was distributed by ‘Dimension Films’.

The prop we used in this scene is of a phone, similar to scream. The camera follows her around as she's on the phone. This is where we got our main idea from, although we cant hear any sound from the reaction as an audience you can tell something bad has happened as she begins to run. It then cuts to a pan. Although we don't actually see her go directly up the hill the audience automatically make a cross cut and assume she has. This means the transition looks smoother as several shots of her walking wouldn’t, therefore this way its synchronous.

This is from the film ‘Scream’. It was distributed by ‘Dimension Films’.

Evaluation.

In the film openings we looked at for inspiration, not many characters were involved, therefore we only included 2. Its difficult for the start not to give too much away and it we thought it was important that something could develop from the two minutes otherwise it would just look like a film trailer. Although we had to only make a small clip it was important what type of shots we included as it was easy to make it look like a trailer. The main focus in these openings were not dialect, but lighting, editing and sound. We used non-diegetic sound throughout. The lighting was natural but some shots were made darker on the editing machine. Lastly to make the establishment that the time period was different when the two different characters on scene we added effects on Adobe Première.

Evaluation.

Some other effects we added are, 'slow'. We added this so the opening started slower and it actually felt like an opening and not just cuts of different shots. This way it felt more like a story was happening. We added a darkening effect so the lighting was as bright, this works as the genre was horror. The scene looked more dreary and tense. A lot of the shot types, such as establishing and over the shoulder are repeated throughout. However as not a lot happens, and the only sound you can hear is the music it builds up suspense for the audience. This is the effect we wanted for a horror. We purposely didn't show there faces as it would give to much away and their wasn't much emotion to portray.

Evaluation

Our two minute clip didn’t really challenge the conventions as it was only a short amount that was suppose to be covered. Although we didn’t want to give away the story line its important the start had something to engage the characters with otherwise they wont want to watch it. Therefore we tried to make it obvious by matching it with previous films

from that genre.