Inspirations- Miss Miller

From each of the thriller films that I have looked at for my posts I have taken some inspiration from all of them. These ideas that our group and I have thought out to use in our opening sequence, have been thought of from inspirations taken from the films that we have watched, which is why research into the thriller genre and watching thriller film has help as the give us inspirations for our own thriller opening sequence. We can take inspiration from almost anywhere, for example I have taken inspiration from films I have watched,these films have shown me conventional of the thriller genre, which lead back to inspirations that can be used in my own thriller film. I have watched Shutter Island, The woman in black, Scream 2, Halloween, The Shining  The Ring and Seven.

One of my main ideas has been to include a female character like in Scream 2, The Ring and The Woman in Black, as each character in all of the films help build a suspenseful atmosphere, which is what i want in my opening sequence, so by including a female character in my opening sequence, I feel that it will help build a suspenseful atmosphere, and will also relate to a conventional thriller film. To incorporate this character into our own opening scene, we decided to change the role of the character, which is conventionally a victim, so to make our opening scene unique, we made the young blonde female, the killer. This should shock the audience, and will still create suspense, and will also incorporate the female character convention.

The soundtrack that I am thinking of using would be a high pitched constant sound, and to add more suspense a sound of a heart beating, that gets louder and faster to add more suspense for the audience. For example I have taken specific Inspirations from sequences, like the sequence that I analysed from The Woman in Black, where the sounds used were effective at creating a high level of suspense and were conventional to the thriller genre, as the suspense engaged the audience and built a relationship between the audience and the character. The inspiration that I took from that scene was that now I know what specific sounds I want to try and replicate in my own thriller opening sequence, specifically the use of a sort silence to intensify the suspense, is very effective, so that I would like to include it in my own opening sequence. I will have a different soundtrack and the events on-screen will help intensify the suspense, this will make my use of the silence different to the use of it in The Woman in Black.

A character with a hidden identity is included in my film, we have filmed our opening sequence so the identity of the male character is hidden when the audience first see him, this leads the audience to think that he is dangerous, and the young female character is in danger from him, which creates suspense. The identity of the male character is later shown a little in the opening sequence, this puts a different perspective of the male character in the audiences head, as he is now seen to be worried when he is looking for the female character. From him being portrayed to the audience as dangerous, to being seen as the character  in danger, the use of hidden identity in our thriller opening sequence is effective at building suspense, and relaying our film to conventions in the thriller genre.

The use of a industrial park and dark alley way is not typically conventional to thriller films, as the thriller films  watched for research didn't include dark alleyways and industrial parks, but the audience can still relate to the [places in  our thriller film, and know that they can possibly be dangerous. This use of an alleyway is effective because most audiences can relate to it. By using an industrial park and an alleyway we know that our thriller opening sequence is going to be more original than others, that might have used a house of Forest, as they have been used alot in thriller films.

I have been inspired by films like scream 2 and The Orphan to use fast editing, which is effective at building suspense in the scene especially during chase scenes, and this would be used with effective camera angles like a point of view shot , and eye level shot so the audience feel like they are in the scene, the use of these shots helps build atmosphere in the scene, which again is conventional to the thriller genre.

The research that I made of thriller films, has helped me in many ways with producing my own thriller opening sequence, for example, the blonde female character that we have decide to include in my own thriller film has been taken as an inspiration from films such as Scream and Halloween, we decided to use a young blonde female character in our thriller opening scene, but to incorporate it into our own opening scene, we decided to change the role of the character, which is conventionally a victim, so to make our opening scene unique, we made the young blonde female, the killer. This should shock the audience, and will still create suspense, and will also incorporate the female character convention.
Also the research helped me understand how to include and build suspense in a scene, I have seen good examples of this from The woman in Black and in Seven, both films use the soundtrack and onscreen sounds to build the suspense slowly, which is conventional to the thriller genre.