I think my film idea fits pretty smoothly into the crime/thriller genre. I am going to use common features such as dark, bluey tones, factual information (like press stories and the news), lots of diegetic sound and naturalistic costumes and settings.
How my film idea fits in:
- I am going to start from black, this was a generic feature that almost every film opening I looked at used.
- My first shot will be very out of focus and slowly fade in. This is part of my technique to make the audience feel uncomfortable, to kind of create the feeling of threat the characters feel through my use of contrasts. This idea was also encouraged by the depth of field used in the opening of collateral to show the untrustworthiness of the character we see and how there may be more to them than what is first presented to the audience. This is what I want to show with the first two characters introduced, there is a backstory to them, we don't know their circumstances, we don't know why they're where they are. All of this uncertainty is represented in the unclear vision the audience has of them.
- The colour scheme of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' was very dark, blue and beak. I want to use this colour scheme in my first shot, I would like it to be quite blue as this connotes sadness and loss and is also a colour often used in police stations, where the characters are supposed to be.
- I really liked the sound used on 'The Snowtown Murders', it was exceptionally effective in creating tension which is what I want to do. I think I'll do a soundscape like this when the titles are rolling but it will sound like a hospital. This hints as to where the next scene will be but the audience don't know the circumstances which makes them feel on edge. There is also negative connotations attached to hospitals because of the upset and trauma they deal with.
- I am going to use mainly steady camera work to make the audience focus on what's going on in the scene rather than having loads of movement however, I really liked the look of the 'Bourne Identity' opening scene, all of which was filmed handheld. Therefore I was thinking of doing my flashbacks with a handheld camera to show the panic leading up to the climax. It will also add to my contrasts as it is different to the steady camera work.
- I am going to pan up the body of the patient on the operating table to build tension as the audience is wondering whose heart has stopped. This delayed entry or introduction to the character is used in crime thrillers to keep the audience guessing and on the edge of their seats. It was effectively used in 'The Departed' when the main character's face was kept hidden right until the final frame of the film, this instantly told the audience he was an important character but also connoted his doubtful past and motives. These suspicions were supported by the flashback later in the opening showing how he could murder without guilt.
- I am going to start my opening in a police station where the two siblings are told of their parents death (this detail would be revealed later in the plot, not in the opening scene). I will then cut to an operating table where the character has been shot, presumably by the same people that murdered her parents. Then I will do flashbacks to when her parents were alive leading up to their death. If the film was to continue it would follow the story of the girl who survived the attempted murder as she aids the police in trying to find the killer. The plot at the beginning hops around a bit and could be quite confusing for the audience. This reflects the complexity of the murder investigation and how the police are trying to work through every bit of information they know. If the film were to continue the plot would jump around different peoples perspectives and between past and present to mimic all the pieces of information coming together and the links slowly beginning to form until they find out who the killer is.
This is a bit like the opening sequence from 'The Departed' as we think all the characters introduced are going to be with us through the whole film however it turns out the entire opening sequence is a flashback in the protagonists life. Therefore at the very end the plot jumps back to present day to link us into the rest of the film.
However, I wanted this film to be a bit more unique with it's structure, not following the usual beginning, middle and end formula. This makes it stand out and keeps the audience on their toes. It also makes it more naturalistic as it is a more accurate reflection on how a crime is solved.
- I really liked the font on the titles of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' as it was a bit different to the others and made the title sequence slightly more uncomfortable to watch. It also indicates that there may be more to the plot than the audience firsts imagines, possibly something dark and sinister. I am going to take inspiration from this text and make my title, which comes up at the very end of my film, an interesting font, possibly with all my letters slightly different indicating that something doesn't add up and these subtle differences in the text disrupt the formality and continuity we like to see, again making the audience feel uncomfortable.
However, my credits are going to roll about halfway through my opening scene on a heart monitor and therefore are going to be sans-serif, in line with the usual crime thriller titles. This is because I want it to feel clinical and factual to reflect how the characters are in a hospital. Also, I don't want the audience to be focussed on the text, their attention should be on the heart monitor and the diegetic sound as they try and figure out what's going on, therefore the sans-serif text shouldn't distract them as much.
- Characters:
A lot of the film openings I looked at either focussed on male characters or had female characters as the victims. For example, 'The Departed' focussed on a boy, our protagonist, being moulded by a man, possibly our antagonist. Also, 'Zodiac' starts with the murder of a young, blonde girl. 'Seven' has a male lead, as does 'The Bourne Identity', 'Collateral' and there wasn't a single female character in the opening of 'The Snowtown Murders'. This also goes for other films I looked at that were in the same genre but didn't have the right tone or no opening scene online e.g 'Tell No-one' 'Ocean's 11' and 'Heat'.
This is in line with the general representations of gender we see in the media today - men are strong, powerful, heroes, tough and villains, just generally the protagonist and often the antagonist of the story.
Women, on the other hand, are soft, weak, beautiful, there to serve as the other half of a relationship and very emotional. They are often the victims and need to be saved by our male protagonist who they promptly fall in love with.
However, there is a movement called feminism which arose in the sixties to achieve equal rights for men and women. This calls for women to have the same chance to have lead roles as men but, unfortunately, men are still represented three times as much as women. This is what I would like to challenge in my film opening. I want my lead character to be female. She is a teenage girl with a younger sibling and both her parents have been killed; this means she has to be strong, brave and independent, qualities never really represented by women in the media. She is going to be shot in the opening sequence but recover and, instead of running from a town she knows is fraught with danger, within which someone is trying to kill her, she says strong and remains to be the hero of the story and fight to capture whoever is terrorising the town.
Overall, my film opening will have enough crime thriller signifiers to clearly place it within that genre of cinema, however I want to challenge social expectations and the generic representations of women in the media by having my protagonist as a strong woman. I also want to have a less generic structure to my film to set it apart from other crime thrillers and make it unique so it stands out in a very popular genre of film.
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