The opening of 'Se7en' is really clever and unique, a lot is happening but it doesn't give any of the story away. Its gives the audience a hint of what the genre is, from watching it i get a sense of crime and mystery. Writing out the timeline i can see where the credits should come in our film and in what sort of order, the most important people should be shown at the end.
I really like the opening of this action adventure film, 'Casino Royale',they have brought a lot of life and creativity to something which many films make look boring. Although it is in no way similar to our genre it has given me a better idea of how an opening should look. As we only have 2 minutes we have to tell more of the story line and introduce at least one character rather than just showing titles. From watching different openings to films i have learnt that the main film title always comes within the first 3rd of the opening and then the most important names go at the end- the director being the final one. We will apply this to our own opening.
We like the idea of having a character who appears to be mentally ill, we got inspiration from this film 'The Ward'. It would be hard film in a location that looks like a hospital so our thoughts are to plan in a house which should still result in a creepy thriller feeling. A typical convention and storyline in a psychological thriller is that the patient witnesses a ghost like figure however no one believes her and assume she is going mental, even though the patient insists she is fine, it becomes a war between the patient and doctors. It gave us the idea of using a flashback at the start of the main character doing 'mental' things, - in the trailer she sets fire to a house ( we wouldn't be able to film something as extreme as this) but its a good way to explain the character in a short amount of time, the audience quickly discover that she isn't normal and is mentally ill. This trailer also gave us ideas for costumes - wet hair gives the effect that they don't care about their appearance it makes the character look more venerable. The colour blue is associated with hospitals and nurses, even though we wouldn't be filming in a hospital we could incorporate this colour into our piece.
For our final piece we have decided to use the genre 'thriller', we feel there are many conventions that we can use such as: scary music to add suspense, high and low angles to add and take away power from a characters, low key lighting and blueish and desaturated colour, a victim and/or a villain. We were influenced by this clip of The Ring which features some of the events we would like to include in our piece one being, seeing something move in a reflection then turning round to nothing being there, and we want to do something similar to the TV turning on by itself. We have thought about the location we can use and we've decided to use Konas grandmas house as it it old fashioned which gives it a creepy feel about it and it also has an attic which we plan on using. We initially wanted to film outside but i think this could look messy and the weather is unpredictable, it would also be hard to edit the sound of wind out so filming inside would be much easier. We have thought about the events that we want to take place in our film but we haven't finalised on a plot yet.
This trailer gives good examples of conventions used in thrillers which is a genre my group are interested in using for our main task. First the childlike music and toys automatically gives it a creepy feeling, which informs the audience on the type of genre. The location is very typical as its set in an old mansion, you know something bad is going to happen as the house is so big and their is one person alone staying their. The era that it is set in also helps with the scary atmosphere, with the great use of flicking candles and old portraits hanging on the walls. We have thought about setting our film in an older era but not sure if we could pull off the same effect. The use of blood is also another convention - 'You could have saved him', using a short sentence like this creates suspense and fear for the audience which makes them want to continue watching, writing it in blood is a clever effect and makes it more frightening. There are no bright colours used everything is dark and even outside is foggy making it unclear on what you are seeing, this puts the audience on edge as anything could happen at anytime- things jumping out. This movie is a typical thriller, you don't see what is there which makes it play on your mind. It has given my ideas on the conventions we we start planning our final piece.
