In order to create the right atmosphere for a thriller, using a font that fits in is very important. There are many ways to do this for example, using childish writing or bold italics. This can easily make the audience feel uncomfortable and set them in the correct mood for the genre of the film. By doing this, it indicates that the film is suspenseful therefore draws the audience in.
The colours of the fonts are often dark to fit in with any pictures or background images that are also on the poster. The fonts used for thrillers and horrors are very different to ones used for animated films and comedies. These types of films have more colourful and bright fonts.
http://borgus.com/hitch/openings.htm -
This link was a godsend when it came to finding out what the master of
thrillers himself used in his opening sequence and gives us an insight
into why he includes these things and how I can incorperate these points
into my own opening sequence.
Some key points I took out of this page was the use of skylines or
headlines. I initially wanted to use the garage and only the garage for
my opening but after reading this information, I have found that the use
of a daylight or outdoor surrounding accompanied by light hearted music
(which in our case is going to be the whistling of oranges and lemons)
is an interesting way to open a thriller of any sort as the contrast
itself causes suspense.
This is a screenshot image from the opening sequence of the thriller,
panic room. It shows an ordinary American city and there is no
indication as to what is going to happen or that there is any suspence
involved but in the clip below, you will see how music is used to make
some suspence and create an atmosphere for the opening of this film.
Another interesting point I came across was the use of written text. I
am going to be editing in titles to my opening sequence during the
editing process and am going to be using a font simular to the one used
in the film 'SE7EN' as is going to be showing mise-en-scene related to
the objects around the character including books (leather) and the tools
and weapons we are going to be showing.
We
decided to use the nursery rhyme _____ as a background sound to our
opening sequence as mentioned in a recently posted blog. Here is a
photo of Mr.Ayres practising his whistling techniques into the
microphone.
Below
is a picture of Mr.Ayres and my group trying to perfect the sound
recording using a recording software on the Apple Macs. We shortened the
recording to fit our video.
As there are only two of us remaining in the group to make our opening sequence, we have been working on the editing process together in order to make decisions faster and get it done faster with the help of Mr.Ayres.
Here are some pictures of Tasnim & I editing our opening sequence and adding posts onto the blog.
As adding the establishing shot to the opening sequence was a last
minute decision, we decided on going up to the school roof terrace to
shoot the scene. Mr.Ayres, Sarah & I all took turns in filming and
after a few practise shots, used a tracking shot to shoot the scene we
wanted. It was very successful and we were extremely happy with the
outcome.
Here are some photos of us filming and some of the scenery we were trying to capture:
Due to the nature of our opening sequence, we had to use threatening tools and weapons to demonstrate danger and suspense. The kind of tools we included in our shots were pliers, hammers and knives, however during the production we had other tools around that were hazardous. To ensure that we were safe and to prevent accidents, we had a briefing about safety regulations we had to follow e.g. any exposed weapons were to be put away straight away or straight after the shots in safe places. As well as the weapons and tools, we used a ladder and a garage door which could have been potentially dangerous so we again, were careful with these and had people supporting the ladder whilst we shot the scenes.
