Hello Cambridge and welcome back to my blog! Today I will be analyzing three film openings within the horror genre to have an idea of what I want to include in my own film opening with inspiration from different films that were also set in the 90's.
The Black Phone (2022) Opening 𐙚
The opening of The Black Phone takes the approach of a character vs character conflict and focuses on adding a sense of intensity and fear and has a repeated theme of missing children, kidnapping, and suspense. The opening starts with a upbeat song with a teenager riding his bike and then the music starts to fade away into the iconic suspense music when a mysterious black van appears alluding to its importance and correlation to the kid's reaction. After this a series of establishing shots and inserts are seen to develop the setting and place of where this film will be taken and still have a sense of mystery. The music gets more intense as more close ups of children show up on screen as well as tight close ups of the word "Missing" and "Caution" lets the audience have awareness that this will be a reoccurring theme in the movie. In terms of mise en scene elements, the lighting and props such as shoes, posters, and balloons to express the important plot devices that are critical for this movie. As the opening goes on the shots are seen to be more shaky from hand held movement and appear to have a distorted image with more reoccurring themes.
Something I'd like to get inspiration for my opening is mostly the color scheme and mise en scene elements like a more yellow undertone in the lighting to give off a most uncertain feeling as well as have a reoccurring prop show up in my opening. A prop that could keep showing up could relate to the character in my opening like they did with the missing posters, black van, and black balloons to represent the Grabber in The Black Phone.
Scream (1996) Opening 𐙚
This opening from Scream (1996) follows Casey Baker who is getting anonymus calls from someone she doesn't recognize and when she repeatedly says he has the wrong number he reels her in closer to play his game. We see lightning themes to be more inviting and homey as seen from her house lights when she's making popcorn but once the killer reveals his true intentions the atmosphere gets dark and eerie which is also seen through the dark coloring of the lighting by casting shadows on her face with hues of dark blue. There is usage of dialogue to help provide context about her relationship with this other character. This is also the utilization of character vs character approach because she is being hunted down by this serial killer who she later finds out killed her boyfriend.
Inspiration from this opening would include background props that are from the 90's as well as the language characters spoke in. Props would include examples like the popcorn, computer, and phone she uses. Also the end of the opening right before Casey is killed off she takes off ghostface's mask and she finds out who the killer really is. I think this would be something interesting I could incorporate. However, not exactly the way she did it but something similar since I can't have the ability or money to produce a well written gore scene with killing.
Misery (1990) Opening 𐙚
The last opening I will be analyzing will be Misery (1990) and in this opening there is plenty utilization of foley sounds like the type writer, grabbing paper, and many other background noises in the car. We find out this guy is a writer the story he wrote has some importance. When he gets into his car it's a time skip montage where he is driving in a snowy road at the edge of a mountain or hill of some sorts with upbeat music in the background. As the scene progresses there are more hand-held shots that give off a raw movement to indicate stress as the clips get faster between the guy's face and the front view of the car with continuity editing. This keeps happening until he crashes his car and the car is just upside down for the rest of the opening.
I'd like to focus on the editing techniques used in this opening because the focus pulls from objects give a significance to certain props and leave mystery to the audience but not so much with context and background which is something I want to have in my own opening. So i wouldn't focus so much on making my audience confused because I will be dropping hints at the end but they would be able to know what's happening due to the dialogue.
Now What?
I will be focusing on making my storyboard and doing more research on the credits and how they appear on these openings or on three new ones to get more inspiration. Stay tuned for these updates on my movie plot and overall sequences that will fit into my 2-minute opening!
No comments:
Post a Comment