1.The title of our film – Deception
The title of our film is displayed in the last frame to complement the shots that have previously been watched and to give the audience an idea of the whole plot of the movie. Deception indicates tricky, which reflects the main character “Sandra’s behaviour”. Our opening scene even reflects Sandra’s deceitful behaviour, as we see Sandra shake “Alexia’s hand” and then later on she smiles into the mirror whist Alexia was bending over to fix the drawer.
Similarly, in one of the movies that we analysed, the title of the film reflected in its opening scene. This film “sin city” showed a man and a woman who seem to be secret lovers. When we think of sin, some of us picture “secret relationships” hence the title does reflect the opening scene. We adapted the idea and that is why we made our title reflect in the opening scene.
We have two different locations for the opening of our film: the forest and the house that has being put for advertisement. We choose a forest to reflect our movies generic convention. When people think of forest they tend to think mysterious event occurs there as the forest is known to be a “scary place”. We also choose forest because sometimes it can be a peaceful place because it links with nature and other times it can be a dangerous place, we can describe the symbolization of the forest as tricky which supports the title of our movie “deception”.
In the opening scene of our movie, the second location was not fully established as it was part of the flash black clips. When looking at the scene from the flash back, the house looks dark to add to the effect of its goriness of our film. Later on in the movie, there will be aspects of the film where the house scene will be light to reflect the character “Alexia’s” calm behaviour.
Costume and props is one of the most important factors that aids portray “generic conventions”. We used “Knife” to help portray our thriller genre. As we wanted to portray Sandra as a psychopath we needed to convey this through her props such as the spade, and the mysterious bag that she was burying. The costume also express her psychopathic behaviour – when we think of “psychic” we tend to think of dark colours such as black, black connoted danger, evil – which was the colour of both characters costume which helped to conform to the generic convention of our movie.
In our opening scene the camera work in our opening scene was smooth and quite slow in the beginning of the movie and as the film progress the editing between two clips. In the Screenshot above the camera work that was used was a long shot of the character and behind the shoulder. This is because we do not want the audience to see the characters face and to keep guessing as to who the character is and what they are doing. The editing used is a fade shot, which fades from one shot to another, this gives the allusion to the audience that the character is not in the right state of mind and also it makes it seems as if the character has been digging so a long time. The reason we chose this type of editing for this particular part is because a straight cut would not have looked right and this types of effects is much better for this particular part.
5.Title, Font and Style
In our opening scene we did not use that many written, the only written we used was for the production names and title sequences. This is the production name taking from the beginning of the opening scene. The font used in this title sequence was tremor and the reason we chose this type of style was because it gives the effect of a thriller and because it is the colour red is very bold and because it is against a black background, it can give the idea of a generic convention of a thriller, so the audience will know what to expect that this film is likely to be a thriller.
6.Story and how the opening sets it up
Our opening scene starts of with a voice over of a conversation and as this conversation is occurring the film starts in a forest. I have print screen this page because this is the beginning clip in the opening scene and it sets the location. The voice over is similar to the movie ‘Children of Men’ because in the beginning of the scene there is a voice over before the scene appears, this gives audience information as to what is going on in the film or what is about to happen. The voice over has an echo to it so it makes it seem more scary and this will make the audience want to listen to the conversation that is occurring. By starting with scene in a forest, it adds to the generic convention of a thriller since most things that occurs in a forest has a foreboding sense that something is going to happen.
7.Genre and how the opening suggests it
The genre of our opening scene is Thriller. We used generic convention to suggest it. Such as the props and costumes i.e. knife, black clothing, mysterious black bag. The main characters deceitful behaviour, the location of the scene which was the forest and even the title of our film –deception also suggests thriller because we think of someone’s “tricky behaviour” we could think that the consequences of the behaviour could result to death.
8.How characters are introduced
The main character is presented in a stereotypical way. We presented her as a psychopathic person through her props and behaviour. She had props such as knife and her identity was hidden throughout the scene which makes her mysterious. When we think of “psycho” we tend to think of knife, death, mystery etc. However, we did not fully introduce our second character as we only see a few clips of her.
9.Special effects
In our opening scene we do not have any type of special effects. However the effects we used in our opening scene was a flashback effect. The effect is in black and white and this shows the audience the difference between what is going on and what is happening now. The reason we done this is because it keeps the audience interested and they will wonder what is happening. Since the flashbacks are bits and pieces the audience will have an idea as to what is going on, however would like to know what is going to happening. Another type of effects that we put into our opening scene was a blur effect. This was done near the ending of the film to blur out the mysterious character so that the audience will not know who the character is until they watch the whole film.
Special effects are usually done on a Bluescreen or greenscreen so that it can add more depth into the story. Special effects have been used in different films such as Toys story and Avatar.
