The document discusses the opening sequence for a thriller film the author created. They took inspiration from titles and narrative structures of films like Shutter Island and The Dark Knight Rises. While keeping the titles simple, they focused on developing the narrative of the opening sequence. This included a traditional police interrogation introduction and use of a nonlinear flashback. Character development slightly challenged conventions by having a strong female murderer instead of a typical male "bad guy." Non-diegetic music and camera techniques like close-ups and angles were used to build suspense, inspired by films such as The Usual Suspects and Blue Velvet.

2. After watching numerous thriller
openings for inspiration and ideas, I used
and developed many conventions in my
own thriller. Such as the titles, I took a lot
of inspiration from Shutter Island (Martin
Scorsese, 2010) and The Dark Knight Rises
(Christopher Nolan, 2012) where the titles
really captured the suspense and
mystery of the film. Such as in Shutter
Island, where the titles shake and
change colour, they begin red which
connotes the danger and then changes
to white which indicates the purity of
humanity, which is recurring theme from
Shutter Island. In the end, I kept my titles
quite simplistic and used a subtle plain
white font; I wanted the narrative of the
opening sequence to really be the focal
point. Therefore I didn't challenge the
convention of titles but developed them
to suit the style and narrative of my
opening sequence.

3. The narrative of the opening sequence, I tried to
keep quite traditional to typical Thrillers, I did this by
beginning with the police interrogation interview, I
felt this began the narrative well and allowed me
capture the audience's attention successfully. I
chose to do a non-linear narrative structure and
used a flashback. I was sceptical about involving a
flashback into my opening sequence at the
beginning, but felt it worked and incorporated
successfully in the final draft. The use of the police
interrogation interview also introduced the
subgenre, which was Crime Thriller. The theme of
my opening sequence was good vs. evil and the
idea of moral ambiguity, which is typical
conventional themes in thrillers.

4. The characters I developed slightly challenged the
conventions of Thrillers, I had a strong female character
who played the murderer, this challenged the codes and
conventions as it's mainly male characters who plays the
dominant & ‘bad guy’ roles in Thrillers. To gain some more
knowledge about female protagonists in Thriller, I
researched movies such as Salt (Philip Noyce, 2010) and
Kill Bill (Quentin Taratino, 2003) where the females
dominate, I found that female protagonists weren't as
rarely seen in thrillers as I first thought. However, I do follow
a typical thriller convention by having another women
playing the victim. I also didn't want my female character
to look stereotypically like a 'murderer' because I wanted
to shock the audience and make them ask questions
about her. I felt her being portrayed as ‘normal’ made the
overall outcome more sinister.

5. I used non-diegectic sound effectively to
build up suspense and tension throughout
my opening sequence, I took inspiration
from The Usual Suspects (Bryan
Singer, 1995), where music is used to
punctuate the events and the pace and
volume is altered to heighten the suspense. I
tried to imitate and use many different
camera angle & frames that I picked up
from different opening sequences, I used
close ups of the protagonist to really portray
the anguish of my characters and again
raise tension. I also used panning, which I
noticed and developed from the opening
sequence of Blue Velvet (David
Lynch, 1986). Over the shoulder, low angle
shots and canted angles was also used to
convey a sense of terror & suspense and to
produce a professional looking opening
sequence.