A police investigation storyline following a kidnapping suggests a mystery drama genre, we used ideas from films produced such as 1997's 'L.A Confidential', North By Northwest (1959), The Usual Suspects (1995) and many others as these films followed the crime/drama/mystery genre which we as a group are intending to meet. In order to produce an opening sequence to meet this criteria, we presented the sequence by beggining straight into the story. We made the the storyline easy to understand by not only positioning the 'stalker' infront of the camera, following the school girl, but also by the voice over, which was used to explain what has happened and how the footage sent into the police station was crucial to finding the kidnapper and the girl kidnapped.
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| Stalker positioned behind the girl, infront of the camera |
The narrative enigma remains unanswered in the opening sequence and in order for them to be answered, the entire film must be watched. The voice over explains that there have been many kidnappings of the late and with an escaped convict, the police are becoming extreamley worried that the convict is linked with the kidnappings and as a result, is the murderer of the bodies being found around the same area. The enigma would of been underpinned in the rest of the film as the plot is based on a police investigation. This therefore is very conventional to an opening sequence, as the narrative enigma is usually unfolded throughout the entire film, rather than given away in the opening as the gripping, attention drawing would be lost before the film has even properly began.
The camera work follows conventional shot sizes and angles throughout the sequence, as we wanted the sequence to be easy to follow. Despite this, we edited the sequence together quite quickly as following a girl walking down the road became quite time consuming to watch and relatively boring, also, we wanted the sequence to appear as home footage so we used a hand held camera for the following scene. This is very unconventional to a drama, but not so much for a mystery crime film.
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| Variety of different shot sizes included |
Through the structure of the sequence, the characters are introduced to the audience as they say goodbye to eachother at the school gates. The stalker is not introduced as such as he remains unknown through the film, so the back of the stalker is only shown to the audience. It is conventional for the characters to be introduced in an non obvious way through films, however, conventions are broken when the kidnappers face is kept hidden. As he, argubley, is the main character or concept in this film, and is unidentified to the audience.
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| Kidnapper remains unknown |
Characters dialogue is included in the sequence and is heard over the top of a low tempo, sombre music track which was used to create the intense atmosphere of the situation. It is conventional to have diegetic dialogue included and non diegetic music within a opening sequence, as it allows the audience to begin to identify with the characters aswell as be instantly introduced with the theme and overall atmosphere that the film is produced with. The voice over is slightly unconventional to this particular genre but it is not completely uncommon as films often use them in the opening sequence inorder to explain previous stories or characters backgrounds in order for the audience to follow the plot easily.
The mise-en-scene of our opening sequence follows the normal conventions as the characters are dressed in believable costume of the story line, the lighting is natural to the location and the character movement is natural. Characters make up is also conventional.
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| Characters conventional costume to the setting |
The last step made in editing our opening sequence was to position titles in. It is conventional for a opening sequence to include titles and upon analysing opening sequences of our choosen genre, we matched the titles we used to the same style that they used. Small, white typography was used in upper case to list the production company, actors, directors, etc, The text was positioned ontop of a black screen, these transitions was included equally throughout the sequence at seperate times. This was conventional to or genre. We found that small font presented better than large as it looked more professional.
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| We found through research that small, upper case font positioned on a black screen was conventional for the titles in our genre |
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