made by Brandon Young

1. HOW MY RESEARCH AND TARGET
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK HAS HELPED
DEVELOP MY THRILLER OPENING
SEQUENCE
BRANDON YOUNG

2. CHARACTER
In our opening sequence we use props such as a mask for our antagonist to create anonymity and to give a
sense of the unknown for the viewer to create even more tension as well as scary . An example of how this
same effect is used would be from the film ‘Friday the 13th’ were the focused killer wears a mask to enhance
the fear from his victims.
Our protagonist character is immediately introduced in a positive way to allow the audience to connect
with him, this is shown by the use of lighting and his dress to give him an ordinary sense.

3. CODES AND CONVENTIONS
Throughout creating my opening sequence and going through all the stages of production from the course
itself, I have overall learnt a lot about the structures of thrillers and what they have to contain to allow
them to become successful and pleasing to the viewer. These including factors such as low key lighting,
shadows, music, type of angles and other types of sounds such as a heart beat or heavy breathing to add
tension and create atmosphere.

4. SOUND
Diegetic and non diegetic sound are important when attempting to create atmosphere and tension within a
certain scene, especially wen using non diegetic to create a build up, usually this is done perfectly by timing
the sound with the actions on screen.
Within our opening sequence the use of much dialogue isn’t present throughout as we wanted to be able to
use music instead to create the right environment for the audience to introduce both our protagonist and
antagonist.

5. SHOTS AND ANGLES
Different types of shots and angles are important in any type of film, but within thrillers, the variation of
shots are very important to creating the impact that most have that make then so successful. These types of
shots include close ups, action shots, over the shoulder shots. Directors also use different types of angles to
create different effects, a good example of a film that uses different angles to create different feelings that
add to the power of a certain scene would be the 2014 film Babadook.

6. TITLES
Within thrillers the titles of the film is one of the most important factors that make it up, the body of the
title has to be of a design that reflects the film while being eye catching to the viewer, this is usually done
by making the text bold in a colour that stands out, usually white in front of a black backdrop. The title
itself has to have some meaning or reference to the events of the film, or in some cases to the antagonist of
the film.