Researching 3 Film Openings From Horror
I have conversed with my friends, and we have come to the agreement that we will be working together for the duration of this project. This is very exciting since we all have the same ideas for the genre and opening.
For my three film openings I will be studying: Scream (1996), IT (2017), and Jaws (1975).
Jaws (1975)
The opening scene of Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg, is an amazing example of suspense and minimalism. The sequence features a young woman swimming in the ocean at night before being attacked by an unseen shark beneath the water. The film's use of POV shots from the shark's perspective, paired with John Williams' incredible iconic score, builds an atmosphere of tension without even showing the creature. The unknowingness (if that's a word) enhances the horror, making the audience's imagination a large reason for the fear.
It (2017)
Andy Muschietti's It (2017) opens with a chilling and tragic scene featuring young Georgie Denbrough and the sinister clown known as Pennywise. The film uses bright, almost dreamlike lighting as Georgie plays in the rain, creating an initial sense of innocence. However, the moment shifts dramatically as Pennywise emerges from the storm drain, using eerie dialogue and uncomfortable stillness to give dread to the viewer. The sudden and brutal attack, featuring a graphic depiction of Georgie’s fate, establishes Pennywise as a formidable and purely evil antagonist.
Scream (1996)
The opening of Scream, directed by Wes Craven, redefined horror with its self-aware and seemingly simple approach. Featuring Drew Barrymore as an unsuspecting victim, the scene plays on traditional horror tropes while thinking outside of the box. The tense phone conversation with the mysterious Ghostface escalates gradually, utilizing diegetic sound (ringing phone, TV noise) to shock the audience and ground the horror in reality. The sudden shift from playful to violent, ending in Barrymore’s shocking death, set the scene for unpredictability in the slasher genre.
Conclusion
Each of these films uses their own unusual and unique techniques to create suspense and horror, whether through suggestion (Jaws), psychological unease (It), or genre deconstruction (Scream). Their openings use their fullest intent to set the stage for the terror that follows. These sequences stay as some of the most influential in horror cinema history, showing that first impressions in film can leave an incredibly long-lasting impact on the viewers.
WTFFF!?!?! switch-up?!?!?!
After doing in-depth research on these 3 film openings, me and my team got together and agreed that our film opening idea was honestly terrible; it was very predictable and sounded like any other basic film students horror film. So we have been brainstorming on an entirely new idea, but we are still utilizing the horror genre as ours. However, we might move more towards psychological thriller, as it seems the most unique, and we really want to let our character shine, so we want to move more away from the killings and more toward character introduction using mise-en-scene and camera techniques, rather than relying on the killings to introduce the antagonist.
Our idea has not been fully developed yet, so I will speak more on it on my next blog when it is fully developed; however, one of the ideas that we wanted to utilize was making an everyday thing that makes you feel safe and sound into something that instills fear in you. Such as a kid in a restaurant eating and everyone disappears, but he's not phased by this, almost as if it's happened to him before. But while this is happening, a man appears with a suit, his face not shown by the backlight (we want to utilize 3-point lighting to the fullest here.), and the boy seems scared, maybe sweat running down his face in extreme closeup, but he doesn't say anything. Then we cut back and forth between him in the restaurant (wearing darker clothes) and him in a therapy session, explaining the phenomenon and asking when and if it would stop (wearing different colored clothes to show a contrast in his mood). I wanted to take inspiration from Smile (2022), but not going with the sort of schitzo route that they use, but rather something that doesn't happen in real life, more like a dreamlike situation, like Nightmare on Elm St. (1984). I think this can set the scene for an amazing story, but for now we want to only use our limited time to only think on the film opening, and if this goes well, we might make it into a short film.
We also wanted to do an establishing shot using one of my friends drones to fly around downtown. We will also need to find a place where we can film the restaurant scene, but the therapist room might be pretty easy, as we can use any small room or find a therapist to be an actor in the story and just use their room. I want to use the drone to maybe make a short 20-second credit sequence with a song in the background, but I don't think it will fit the scene we are trying to portray, so we might just scrap it.
That's the story for now, but I am really excited to keep going on this track and create a masterful piece that shows my fullest intent and commitment to this project. I am super excited to get this thing on!
Whats next?
Im glad you asked, and thanks for reading once again. In my next blog, I will be writing about researching, analyzing, and discussing three credit sequences from films within a chosen genre.
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