The document discusses how the opening sequence of a horror film establishes characters and conveys genre to set expectations. It summarizes that the sequence introduced a male antagonist and two female protagonists, one who is killed, following horror conventions. Dark costumes and lighting created an eerie atmosphere. An establishing shot of a dark, quiet area around a lake set an ominous tone. Quick cuts and symbolic props like blood and a weapon also effectively presented the genre and left viewers suspenseful to watch more.

2. • Characterisation not only helps tell the narrative of the opening sequence but it helps convey the genre to the
audience. Most commonly, films will establish their main characters within their opening sequence which I
believe I and my group did very well. We have decided to use a male as the antagonist as in most horrors a
male is most commonly used, based on the idea that they are usually seen as the stronger sex. We have used
two girls (one who is killed and the other a future victim) as the protagonists as they are typically those who
are targeted due to the idea that they are the weaker sex. We stuck to these conventions within our opening
in order to have an effective picture of what our genre is as many other horrors do this. We firstly see the girl
who gets killed. She is dressed in all black Is wearing red lipstick. The use of the dark clothing as apposed to
bright clothing presents the mysteriousness of the moment, It creates an eerie vibe and foreshadows possible
events that are yet to come in the narrative. The red lip sick also connotes ideas of danger, is conveys ideas of
blood and death, which again adds to the narrative. We also dressed all the other characters seen in the
opening sequence in the same dark colours for the same reason. This is also seen in many other horror
movies such as:
Friday the 13th Scream Dead Silence

3. In my opening sequence I and my
group used a dark quiet area that has
little light in order to create the eerie,
scary atmosphere that we wanted to
portray to the audience. We wanted to
do this as in most horror genre the area
is usually quiet/abandoned and has low
key lighting. An example can be seen in
‘The conjuring’. The lighting and lack of
characters within the shot is very
similar to our opening sequence.
Large amounts of horror movies use an establishing shot at the start of the film to
allow the audience to get a sense of location. being able to see certain aspects of
the character and the surroundings is what keeps the audience on edge. The use of
a quiet, dark area within our opening sequence adds to the idea that something bad
is going to happen as we get notions that this is a dangerous area. This can be seen
in the movie ‘The woman in black’. They have used an establishing shot in order to
show the location of the house – it shows both the surroundings and the house are
worn out and not looked after which adds a sense of horror as this type of house is
usually associated with danger within movies. Within our opening sequence we
used an establishing shot to show the quiet, dark area round the lake which creates
a sense of horror.

4. Many Horror genre films have their own unique way of presenting
their genre to the audience. We as a group decided we would
create our own unique way of portraying the narrative and genre
to the audience in a way that would be enticing. We took
inspiration from the film ‘se7en’ in which uses a montage of quick,
snappy shots which creates a sense of suspense and fear, leaving
the audience on the edge of their seats. As we were creating a
horror-thriller we thought this would be appropriate in order to
allow the audience to fall in the same mood of the film and so we
used a similar technique. The audience can also see the genre
through iconography. To present our
genre to the audience we used props
such as a hammer (weapon) and blood
which are clear symbolic factors which
portray that the genre is a horror. The
movie ‘se7en’ has also used this with
the likes of a razor blade (presumably
used as a weapon) which is also seen
within the iconography of horror.

5. • Typical horror movies often base around the idea of one character killing another character(s).
Within research we found that there are a multiple selection of a typical narratives for horror
genre movies which gave us choice in what order we could put our events in for our opening
sequence. Within our opening sequence we are given a large part of drama as the start of the
opening sequence where we see the young girl get killed by the antagonist which is an
impacting, and important aspect of the film. This help set up the narrative for the whole film and
we believe it to be enticing for the audience. This was inspired by the use of this type of opening
in ‘The woman in black’, where we see three little girls committing suicide during the first few
moments of the opening. We believed this to be the most exciting, enticing opening in which we
could leave out audience on the edge of their seat.
• As mentioned before, the use of our costumes also helps convey the narrative. We have dressed
the characters in black clothing to connote a sense of mystery. This entices the Audience as it
seems that there is more to the narrative to what meets eye in the opening sequence – leaving
the audience with the need to watch on further.