Film Opening - PitchBRITT FOSTER, JASMIN MAHMOOD AND SAMANTHA TIMMINS

Idea for our film opening

Idea for our film opening

Creation of Enigma

The main themes of a psychological thriller film are- Identity – identities will often be hidden and some characters will be trying to find their true identity within themselves - Reality – characters often try to discover what is their real life and what is just within the narrative- Death – antagonists often have a fascination with death and the dead

We have incorporated he theme of identity into our own opening with hiding the identity of the antagonist’s identity but also hinting towards who it could be.

Also, in our script, David will be looking for someone (that someone being Sophie) in the opening which introduces both characters and adds mystery.

Pace & Rhythm

The editing style we plan to use is a continuity edit with the clips edited in chronological order to tell the story of Sophie and David’s breakup and his emotions after that

This was common in the film openings we analysed (aside from Se7en) and lots of straight cuts, jump cuts, dissolves and cross cutting was used.

We also plan to use a lot of dark colours and dark shadows to emphasise that David is bad without giving it away straightaway.

From our audience research, it was found that people didn’t like being given everything in the opening so we do not reveal who the stalker/killer is in the opening

We plan to do this by not showing any of David’s facial features and keep his identity hidden from the audience using close ups of his hands and also close ups of his head from the back covered by a hood

Mood & Tone

Conventional psychological thriller films have an eerie mood and tone to them which is usually set up by the use of sound and the action in the scene.

We have incorporated this into our opening with the action by showing the antagonist (David) pinning up photos of ex girlfriend Sophie and making a “mural”

He is also shown to be very aggressive and angry towards her when she breaks up with him in a flashback

In the psychological thriller films we studied, there was a running theme of the use of low key lighting, harsh lighting on certain points and dark shadows so we plan to use harsh lighting on David and a lot of low key lighting in his ‘lair’/basement

Characters

Typical main characters in a psychological thriller include a victim and an antagonist

The consensus view from our audience research was that we needed a victim and an antagonist who was usually a stalker type character.

The first character we have is Sophie who is the ‘victim’. She is a stereotypical teenage girl in Sixth Form, who’s into fashion and makeup and such.

Characters

The second character is David who is the antagonist.

He too is in Sixth Form however he likes to wear dark colours and unlike most teenage boys he has a lot of issues regarding his mental health like OCD and he can be very obsessive

These issues are shown in the form of his obsession with Sophie and getting her back

In our research, people said that they liked to see the main character as good looking so David is good looking.