1. Summarise your film idea. Provide a brief synopsis and outline what happens in your film opening.
Our film is titled "Followed," and is a horror/thriller following the story of a girl being stalked and eventually caught by the criminal, who may or may not be some kind of killer. She unsuspectingly makes her way through an empty school, while an unknown character follows her and is shown pulling a gun from his back pocket. She is finally caught by the stalker at the end before the shot cuts to the title of the film.
2. What kind of information has been included in your film opening?
Not a lot of information is revealed to the audience during the opening. The audience doesn't find out who the villain is, or what happens to the victim. Our opening does, however, give the information that there is a seemingly innocent character being followed by someone with a gun, causing the audience to assume that he is probably a villain. But overall the story is an enigma - the opening is quite ambiguous and not much is discovered.
3. How do the titles link to the main film idea?
The font we used for the titles was important in order to establish our chosen genre. The scribbled, scratchy font creates a tense, panicked atmosphere, and indicates to the audience that this is a horror film. The way the last shot suddenly cuts to the title "FOLLOWED" before we know what exactly is going to happen to the victim is effective, because it causes the audience to wonder what happened and feel compelled to continue watching in order to find out.
4. Summarise the expected audience reaction. What should the audience be thinking by the end of your opening? Is your opening clear or ambiguous?
Our opening sequence remains ambiguous both throughout the opening and at the end of it. Our main character is revealed; however, the audience isn't shown much of the villain, creating a sense of fear and distrust. They know he is a threat - they are shown the gun being pulled out of his pocket, his hand reaching to grab the victim... but before the audience can find out what happens to the characters, the shot cuts to the title of the film on a black background. This creates suspense and gives the audience a curiosity to find out what has happened, although it is clear that whatever has happened isn't so good for the main character.
5. Identify three things that you included in your grid that are important in the construction of an opening sequence and explain their role in understanding the film.
1) The different shot lengths and camera angles used: the extreme close-up of the phone screen in the first shot shows the text written, revealing important information to the audience about what the character is doing walking around an empty school by herself. Other shot examples included in the grid is the low angle shot from behind the villain's shoes, the close-up of the gun, and the close-up of the victim's face when she begins to suspect that something isn't quite right.
2) The characters revealed: We used an establishing shot of the main character indicating what she looks like, age, how she dresses, etc., which is important in understanding her role in the film - she is an innocent character who just happens to be the unfortunate victim of someone (we don't know exactly who yet) following her. The setting that the character is in also explains more about her, as the setting is a school and that tells us that she is a student, emphasising the probability of her innocence. The villain is also vaguely revealed, for example, with the close-up low angle shot from behind his shoes. Ambiguous shots like these create a feeling of unease. The audience can assume that this character isn't to be trusted and is a threat to the girl.
3) The narrative structure of the opening: our opening sequence is in chronological order. The grid shows one event - the opening focuses on the main character and the fact that she is being followed. This one event, in which the perspective switches between the characters, is essential to the film as a whole. The audience can understand that this film will focus on either this followed character or whoever is following her. They can then predict that maybe there will be some kind of mystery relating to the scene and its characters, one that possibly will be solved by other characters introduced later. But regardless of whatever might happen later in the film, the event in the opening sequence is clearly significant to the whole story.
6) How effective is your project as a film opening? Explain your answer.
In a way, our project is quite effective. We tried our best to establish the thriller/horror genre, through camera angles, font and how the characters were initially revealed to the audience. However, it would have been more effective if there had been a way to control the lighting. The shots in our grid have quite high-key lighting, and low-key lighting would have been better to create a frightening or tense atmosphere. Unfortunately, there wasn't really anything we could do about this, as we had limited time and resources to make these shots. Another problem with our opening sequence is that the text at the beginning revealed hardly anything about where the character was going - she could have been simply meeting a friend, or going to engage in some sort of criminal activity. If we wanted this to remain ambiguous, then it wouldn't have been a problem, but since we wanted to present this character as simply an innocent victim, this is something we could have improved on.
Despite this, overall I think our project was quite successful, due to our limited revelation of the villain, the variety of shot lengths and camera angles, and the font, which was appropriate for our genre.
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