The film opening we came up with uses the formula of repetition and difference, utilizing some of the conventions of opening sequences in films [click here for more detail] and our chosen genre of the psychological horror/thriller [click here for more detail].
Our opening sequence also abides by Levi-Strauss’ narrative theory of binary opposites, with a very clear theme of good versus evil (the good represented by the sweet-natured housemate, Yasmin, the evil represented by the killer, Emma). Levi-Strauss’ theory is one that, unlike other narrative theories, can be found in all films, most obviously in the characters. For example, Bianca Stratford and her sister Kat in 10 Things I Hate About You (Gil Junger, 1999) are complete opposites, Bianca being the stereotypical popular girl to Kat’s nonconforming ‘antisocial’ feminist. [Click here for more on binary opposites.]
See Question 2 of the evaluation for more character detail.
As is conventional in horror films, the victims in our film are all female. Although this isn’t shown, it is strongly implied, when Yasmin talks about ‘awful things on the news’, and Emma’s reply mentions ‘all those poor women’. However, we decided to twist this and make the killer female too. As in other film openings we looked at which showed the character/s getting ready, such as Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic, 2001) [click here for a detailed post] and V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2005) [click here for a detailed post], we chose not to reveal the killer’s face immediately, and instead have a build-up to it after a series of CUs and ECUs. We originally intended to use contrapuntal sound in our sequence, but this was difficult given the fact that we had to use copyright-free music, and our ideas didn't fit, so we used very conventional suspense-building music. (See pre-evaluation summary for music detail)
We also had a section where Yasmin is walking up the stairs into a dark space, which is a conventional action in the horror genre, as it incorporates the fear of the unknown.
Similarly, the themes of revenge and extreme jealousy are also core to the plot of the film, and tend to be present in many films of the genre, such as Crush (Alison Maclean, 1992), where one character’s jealousy-provoked lies cause another to seek revenge on the object of the first’s jealousy. A more recent example is The Talented Mr Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999), which also explores the envy and instability of protagonist Tom Ripley, which causes him to turn into a murderer, just like Emma.
Another thing we did was to juxtapose the ideas of beauty with death and evil (see above for the literal juxtaposition in props), which presented beauty in a negative fashion, quite unusual for the genre, and presenting an interesting contrast.
We infused the convention from the film noir genre of the femme fatale in the character
of Emma, a charming, alluring, but dangerous young woman, only with a more modern slant, twisting in psychological horror and thriller elements. Emma’s nails are painted red, she wears a red dress, and we show her applying bright red lipstick – typical of the femme fatale in classic film noirs, such as Chinatown's (Roman Polanski, 1974) Evelyn (see right).
A more modern example of the femme fatale is Mia Wallace of Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) (see left).
However, we broke conventions by breaking Todorov’s classic narrative pattern of
equilibrium -> disruption -> resolution -> restored order -> new equilibrium
by starting our opening with a disruption, with the introduction of a killer to an ordinary setting.
Our sequence is in real time, following a linear structure, and uses enigma codes to move the film along.
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