The document provides an analysis of the opening sequence of a psychological thriller film titled "Diagnosis". It summarizes that the sequence establishes mystery around the main character Mayson's situation through his solitary confinement in an isolation room. Visual elements like the red title font, black and white cinematography, close-up shots, and Mayson's clues with paper and pens aim to engage the audience in unraveling what is occurring and solve the puzzle before him. The analysis also explains how characteristics of Mayson's autism are portrayed through his facial expressions and behaviors to further immerse the viewers in the psychological elements of the genre.

1. EVALUATION QUESTION 1
Shauna Penfold

2. Our title suits the psychological thriller
genre as it is a sense of mystery for what
is being diagnosed, which the audience
need to discover which leaves them
questioning, which links into the
psychological thriller genre.
The font of our title is red, which we
have taken to represent blood which
helps the audience discover part of our
film, as there is a deadly disease that is
spreading and lots of people are dying
from it so the red represents the blood.
I found and researched that lots of psychological
thrillers had similar font colours to ours, dark
gloomy sorts of colours and red was a common title
colour for example ‘the broken hart’ was one I
found which had a bold red font.

3. Our setting is in set in an ‘ isolation
room’ which we found suited out opening
sequence best and this is where our only
character is taken into.This fits in with the psychological thriller
as it is the sense of the unknown in the
room and it is only one person in the
room so the audience do not know and
are still glue less into why Mayson (our
main character) is in their, so it again is
the sense of mystery.
It links in with the psychological thriller
aswell as it is just an empty room so
nobody knows what is going on in their
only Mayson does when he is trying to
figure out all about the disease. It is an
eary setting as it just an empty which
room which the white represents the
coldness and cleanness of the room which
it almost seems worthless.
The fact that we did a
close up of the sign on the
door shows its importance
and tells the audience that
it is an important part of
our opening sequence,
and why is still needed to
be figured out

4. The costume our main character
Mayson is wearing just normal teenage
boy clothes as we wanted him to come
across as ‘normal’ so it would add to
the mystery of what he was doing.
As our certificate rating is a cert 15 we
wanted to our target audience to relate
to our character as much as possible
and to do this we said for Shakir to
dress in his normal clothes.
Our main prop was the pens and paper which we found
in many psychological thrillers the main character was
looking at things and trying to figure it out. The film
‘memento’ helps us as the main character was always
looking at photos and thinking so instead of a photo we
change it to paper and pens to emphasise that Mayson
was trying to work out something giving the audience
clues.
Researching into physiological thrillers
a common prop used was a pen and
paper so we took that and made it our
own in our opening sequence.
We also had a clock that was ticking down
in the corner of the screen throughout the
whole opening sequence which we found
was effective as it adds more suspense.
Se7en helped us with this idea as when
watching this film the clock really added to
the mystery and suspense of things.

5. The common shot types we found in a psychological
thriller was extreme close ups and close up shots
and so we used these to show the characteristics of
Mayson’s personality.
Our opening sequence has many jump
cuts, so many short clips and short
movements
The over the shoulder shot we did was
when Mayson was looking in the mirror
which we found was effective as the
audience would see him as what he was
seeing and we wanted to again try and
relate the audience and the characters.
Again in the opening sequence of ‘memento’ there
was an extreme close up of the characters eyes
which showed the concentration of what he was
looking at, showing it was important what he was
looking at, which we wanted to show the audience
everything Mayson looked at was important.

6. For our editing we thought our opening
sequence best suited it to be in black and
white.
The black and white emphasises the
emptiness of the room and the mood
throughout the opening sequence which we
found was a common idea in the pyscho-
thriller genre.
By the whole opening sequence being in
black and white the colour at the end
draws attention to our title and showing
the importance of it.
Because Mayson is trapped in this isolation
room, he is not showing many emotions and
we thought that black and white did not
show any emotions or feelings so the colours
match Mayson's feelings..

7. Because this is the only section in our opening
sequence that is in colour it gives the film a burst
of colour and importance at the end.
The colour of our font suits the genre as
many of the pyscho- thriller genre titles
are red, however our title challenges the
genre as it looks a bit like blood which is
what we wanted but does not normally be
represented as this in a common pyscho-
thriller film.

8. The pen and paper is the biggest clue in our opening
sequence as it shows the audience that there is working out
and solving work that needs to be figured out and that is
what Mayson needs to do so this is the biggest clue.
All the numbers and paper everywhere shows
that it is a puzzle that Mayson needs to put
together to solve the problem.

9. As our main character is autistic we needed to show a
variety of characteristics to show this, the way we did this
was to use many extreme close ups and close ups
The eyes twitching was a common characteristic which
we found and extreme close up shot was best to show
this, and the fact it is an extreme close up shows the
audience that it is important. Throughout the opening
sequence we showed this for example Mayson moving
his lips and mouth and him rocking in the corner of
the room.
We also showed himself getting angry and
frustrated when he did not get something right with
his work which relates back to teenagers getting
frustrated if they cannot do something. By Mayson
getting frustrated aswell shows what he is trying to
solve is hard as he pushes his chair and stands up
with anger.

10. The special effects that we used was slow motion on the piece of paper
that Mayson chucked on the floor. We thought it would look the best like
this and by slowing it down the audience could see writing on it which adds
to the suspense of what was written on it so we slowed it down enough to
see that there was writing on it but not enough to see what the writing
actually was.
Our transitions were fast jump cut shots
showing all of Mayson’s characteristics. It
was also very flashing so the audience did
not have much time to figure out what was
what which links in with Mayson not having
lots of time to solve the problem.