Horror Openings.

This is the opening to Scream (1996)

As the credits roll and the word “SCREAM” appears, non diegetic sounds of phones ringing and women screaming get louder and louder until we get the first shot. The first shot is a close up of a phone ringing; a girl is walks into shot and answers it. She is blonde and alone in the house – a typical cliché in horror films. There is then an establishing shot of the house the scene is set at. The phone then rings once more and a conversation begins, as the light flirty conversation continues there is very light music throughout this scene, until the line “I want to know who I’m looking at” a dark ominous non diegetic tone is heard signifying the shift in tone in the scene. The scene gradually becomes darker and more terrifying by each passing minute and diegetic sounds of popcorn and dogs barking are heard increasing the tension. 

Horror Openings.

This is the opening to Halloween (1978)

The scene begins with the non diegetic sound of the famous Halloween soundtrack, a fast paced beat that resembles the sounds of chimes and bells. As the music continues to a black empty screen, a Halloween pumpkin appears glowing and the credits roll in orange colour, symbolising Halloween. The music seems to get faster as the credits continue creating a sense of fear and discomfort in the viewer, the camera gets slowly closer the pumpkin until all is left is the ominous glow of the pumpkin eye. The light from the pumpkin goes out and the film begins. A diegetic sound of children singing a creepy Halloween song follows and the screen reads “Halloween Night 1963” we then cut to an establishing shot of a large house. One long continuous shot follows as we see what the character is seeing through their eyes. This is made clear by the diegetic sounds of breathing and the use of a steady-cam, a form on handheld camera. This is further expressed when the character picks up a clown mask, puts it on and all we see for the remainder of the scene is everything through the eye holes of the mask. The character proceeds to his sister’s bedroom, she is undressed and it is hinted she had sexual activity with her boyfriend – her then subsequent death plays on the common cliché in horror films that a women will die early on and that sexual activity relates to the character being killed. Diegetic sounds of screaming are heard as the girl is stabbed to death. The parents of the girl arrive at the scene and the killer is then revealed to be a young boy in a clown costume – the brother of the murdered teen. His name is revealed to be Michael.

Genres Of Film.

The Genre i have chosen to research for my media project is Horror. Horror is a successful blend of violence and scares to entertain its audience. Horror has been successful and has been prominent since the early days of cinema, because of the ability to keep the budget relatively low. Some of the most successful Horror films have been produced on miniscule budgets. This cheap way of production along with the genres simplicity is what drew our group to the idea. Here are some examples:

"Halloween" (1978)
"Scream" (1996)
"The Hills have Eyes" (1977)
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974)
"Carrie" (1976)
"Friday The 13th" (1980)
"I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997)
"Saw" (2004)

Genre Styles

We took some time to decide on the genre we wanted to use for our film opening and after talking to my group members and discussing our options we decided to choose horror/thriller.

To get an early idea of what kind of techniques and styles used in the industry we sat down and looked at openings to Horror movies.
First we watched the opening to "The Exorcist" (1973), very little happened during the opening exchanges and we struggled to find and helpful techniques from this opening. We then chose to have a look at "Friday The 13th" (2009) this opening scene had much more immediate action with scenes of sex and violence, the body count was around 5 by the time the titles even rolled. we then watched the beginning of "My Bloody Valentine" (2008) It's opening scene was more setting the main backstory through newspaper articles created by CGI, this scene had tense non diegetic music backing it up .We then watched the opening to the based on real events movie 'The Exorcism Of Emily Rose' which set the tone of the movie with a really tense opening scene with non diegetic music and a general sense of dread.