4. CONVENTIONS
Unsettle you - through the plot, mise-en-scène.
Scary music – non-diegetic sound will be used to scare the audience.
Usually fades to black are used in scary films and before the film starts.
Scary setting – shown through the weather which will usually be stormy or
rainy with fog and with dark lighting, a typical example is an
establishing shot of a scary building at night.
5. WHAT AN OPENING OF THE FILM DOES
Establishes the characters
Music
Credits
Establishes the setting of the film
The woman in black
establishes this room that has
a significance in the film.
6. DIFFERENCES
Watching different film openings of the horror genre showed not only
conventions but also some differences between them.
Not all the film openings had music, personally I would have music in my
film opening as I find it more engaging to watch.
The credits were not always in the film opening.
In certain films there is no dialogue between characters or any speech, for
example in the Woman in Black there is just music playing. This gives
more mystery to the film and I like this way of opening a film.
The amount of the plot that is revealed is different for each film, I find the
ones that reveal more grab the audiences attention quicker but
personally, to keep the audience to watch the film I think only little bits
of the plot should be revealed in the film opening, for example in Se7en
there is just titles, the only images we see are books and hands moving
objects around.
