2. Setting/Location
We decided to set our film/ opening
sequence in a house as we found that
quite a few psychological films were set
in houses. A house is a typical convention
of a psychological thriller, because the
audience will see the house as an
innocent setting, and so they won’t
expect any harm to come to the people
living there. We used this shot as it
showed a normal house and the lighting
created a happy tone which contrasts
with what will happen to the family that
lives in the house. An example of a
psychological thriller that is set in a house
is Ils - Them, however the film is set in an
isolated house which has connotations of
danger in thrillers and so we decided to
go against the conventions and so we
decided to show that there was a busy
road behind by having flashes of cars
behind.

3. Introduction of characters
We decided to introduce our
character from the very start as we
felt that it was important that the
audience knew who she was. In
most psychological thrillers you
meet the main character from the
very start however, the face
normally remains hidden to create
the suspicion. An example of this is
Strangers On a Train. As a group
we decided to show her face
straight away as at first the
audience thinks that she is
innocent but throughout the
sequence the audience starts to

4. Story and how the opening
suggests it
In this frame the audience can see the
main character walking into the house
about to clean it. The audience can
then tell that she is the cleaner that the
voice message was left for. We
showed her walking through the door
because in the Shutter Island opening
sequence the audience experiences
walking through the gates and we
wanted to create something similar.
We wanted to show the audience that
the house was a normal house and
that there was nothing suspicious
about it and so it left the audience
wondering who was the bad person.
However, Shutter Island used a point
of view shot to raise awareness that
this island has connotations of danger
and uncertainty. Later on in our
opening sequence we also create
some uncertainty.

5. Title and font style
We used the same title font throughout
of the whole opening sequence except
for the title of the film as we wanted this
to stand out. We chose to do black font
with a white outline because at first you
think the audience know the main
character and so you have this black
and white interpretation of. This is
because the audience sees her as
innocent, however, she isn’t what she
seems at first. The black and white
colouring scheme is used to represent
the audience’s first impression of the
main character. The Black Swan used
black opening titles and so we decided
to use them as well as we thought they
stood out but they also added the sense
of danger.

6. Costumes
We decided to dress the main character
up in a red top and black leggings so
that the top really stood out. We chose
a red top because red has connotations
of blood and danger and so we wanted
to portray from the beginning as a
dangerous character just through her
clothes. The top reflects what will
happen later on in the film as at the end
of opening sequence you can tell that
something bad will happen to the
children. We also based it on the fact
that some psychological thrillers have
characters with inner demons and our
main character does and so the red
represented this inner demon within her.
An example of a film that contains a
character with an inner demon is Black
Swan and so we decided that this was a
good idea.

7. Genre and how the opening
suggests it
In this frame we conveyed that it was a
psychological thriller through the editing and
the actors facial expressions. We wanted to
portray the main character as someone who is
obsessed with cleaning and that is fairly
aggressive. We did this through the facial
expressions as she scrunched her face up so
that she looked obsessive and aggressive at
the same time. This would have shocked the
audience as they have only seen her as
someone who is happy and relaxed before.
The editing plays a key effect here as we
added the Vignette effect on. This created a
dark outline around her displaying her other
side. Dark lighting is a key convention of
psychological thrillers and a good example of
this is Shutter Island. This contains a lot of
dark lighting which implies that something is
quite right which the message that we wanted
to get across.

8. Title of the film
For our title of the film we got it from
DaFont and the font we chose was
Ball Tongue. We chose this font
because it was different to most
texts. We also felt that the two
layers represented the two sides of
our
character
as
the
one
underneath is pointed and jagged
which represents Darcy’s harsher
and more hidden side. We decided
to have a different font compared to
the rest of the text because we
wanted it to stand out from the rest
of the text. We found that the film
Se7en also changed their font but
only slightly in order to make it
stand out and so we decided to
something similar.

9. Camerawork
In this frame we decided to use a high
angled shot so that the audience
could see what was going on and it
was a change in the angle shot which
showed her mood change. This
obvious change told the audience that
they were about to see a whole new
side to Darcy. In Shutter Island they
used a high angled shot at the top of
the spiral staircase to portray the
feeling of spinning out of control. We
based our high angled shot on this
idea as Darcy is starting to lose
control over her actions. The high
angled
shot
also
shows
the
vulnerability of the children as Darcy is
taking the children’s toys and
destroying
them
which
has
connotations of children.

10. Sound
Throughout of our whole video we built
the sound up through layers to build up
the tension in the sequence. At the
beginning of our sequence we had a
voiceover that introduced the character
through a voicemail on Darcy’s phone.
At the end of our sequence we had
complete silence to create anticipation
about what Darcy would do next. We
also thought that the silence reflected
our film title which was Silence. The
silence will probably have the biggest
effect as the sound was fairly loud in
the background and then it turned into
complete silence. We didn’t find any
other psychological films with silence in
their opening sequence however, we
did watch some opening sequences
with the sound turned off to see what
impact silence could have.