The scene starts off completely black and is edited so it fades in to a follow a piece of chalk being dragged across paper. As the chalk is dragged across, black writing of the credits comes up. Each time the chalk changes positions and the camera gets closer or further away, the editing is cut so that each video fades into each other. This continues the whole way through the opening scene. This helps suggest this is a psychological thriller because it is relatively simple and you wouldn't have something complicated.
The scene ends with a close up of the final drawing and the final title comes on screen. I have researched the editing of the opening of Black Swan because I felt it could potentially be applicable to our film opening as it is also a psychological thriller. The panning of the shot and the simplicity of the opening is a regular connotation of psychological thrillers, there is not usually a lot happening.
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In the opening, it starts off with an eerie sounding non-diagetic music which consists of the higher pitch (and in a minor key) of an organ and a xylophone. The organ has connotations of evil and supernatural and the high pitch matches with the young children. It sounds like a children's nursery rhyme in a minor key, which we decided would be appropriate for our opening too as ours also involves children.
When the children stop playing, the non-diagetic music adds minor chords in a lower pitch which suggests that something bad is going to happen. A drum is also eventually added which makes the sound deeper in bass. This creates a dark atmosphere. Just before the girls jump out the window, all instruments stop and there's just a chorus of low strings in minor. This connotes a supernatural and dark sound. As I am creating the sound mainly by myself, I decided it would be a good idea to look at different thrillers to try to see if there was a regular pattern within the different music. I found that most of the music involved in the opening sequences of different thrillers was generally rather high pitched and always in minor, which I found helps create an engaging and intense atmosphere. We don't need very many props for our film as the story doesn't involve a lot of props. The props that we are planning to use for our opening thriller production will be a swing and a traditional looking teddy bear. We wanted to include a teddy bear in our production as we feel that as a prop it reflects the child's age. A teddy is also used to show that the child feels safe with it next to him. Teddy bears are not often used in thrillers but are used in films where there is a family or a child. We thought that we would twist the usual stereotype and show the teddy bear in a different light. also wanted to use a swing because children normally go to local parks to play. The park is normally a place where you can play but instead something bad is going to happen to the child. Empty parks are sometimes featured in thriller films as they have a sense of mystery. We decided to use a child in our production as films like Orphan and Chucky have children and as the main characters.
We took some inspiration from the opening scene of an episode of Once Upon A Time [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndot6rngE-E] where there were a few features that we decided to include. These are features such as a childhood toy [a teddy bear/a kite] where it becomes broken, foreshadowing a dark event. Another is the children playing in the forest in daylight where it should be a cheerful scene but there is something hidden, watching them. Like in our opening scene, this includes the antagonist [or in our case, the shadow] appearing from behind a tree. Both this opening scene and our opening scene ends with a close up on the young child's face before flashing forward to present day on a close up of the older person’s face.
For the costumes, I've suggested a typical outfit for both the teenage boy and the young boy. The costumes may look similar, to represent the fact they are the same person. The young boy wears light coloured clothes to show his innocence and then the teenage boy wears dark clothes to represent the transition from innocence to corruption.
Not including a list of actors, directors and release dates, I've drawn up a preliminary design including a main picture to suggest the nature of the film (lost childhood innocence), the title of the film (mysterious to make the audience want to watch the film to understand the meaning of the title), the production name (if it is a popular and recognisable company, the audience will be more inclined to watch it if they have produced other good films) and a tag line of 'if you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise...'. This ominous quote from the children's rhyme 'Teddy Bear's Picnic' connects to the main image and makes it clear to the audience that it is a dark film; broken innocence being a primary theme.
I was out yesterday and found a possible park nearby trees by Eton College (camera quality not so good as it was very dark and had to use the night filter)
Various other names that we discussed are displayed in a spider diagram below.
I was out and saw this forest, I thought it would be a good idea for a location. It has a clearing that we could use with a lot of space, but it also has a lot of trees, which has connotations of Thrillers, which forests are commonly used in. It is a big space so has connotations of the character being alone in a large space.
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