What makes a thriller opening sequence?
A Thriller movie aims to give the audience strong feelings of anxiety, excitement, enigma and other emotions. There are several themes that a thriller can depict, such as psychological, supernatural, terrorism, political conspiracy, abduction and many more. Movies such as “Donnie Darko” and “Taken” are examples of thriller movies, “Donnie Darko” is a psychological thriller and “Taken” is an abduction thriller. In most thriller films, the main focus is to pursue a single minded goal and to keep viewers at the edge of their seat as the plot begins to unfold towards a climax. The tension usually arises when the main characters is stuck in a life threatening situation/mystery or a dangerous mission in which escape seems impossible. The plot in most thrillers, usually involve characters which come into conflict with each other or with outside forces. Thriller movies are similar to horrors, except thrillers use intense and exciting action, mystery and tension to engage the audience.
The opening sequence of a thriller shouldn’t have too much action in it, or give a way too much, because the aim of an opening sequence is to build up the story steadily. It should build up suspense within the audience so that they will want to continue watching it. The opening sequence of a thriller has to give the audience an idea of what’s to come in the film. Our research verified this information, and we took it all into consideration when we created our opening sequence.
Opening Sequence Comparison
In our group, each of us analysed a different thriller opening sequence within the psychological genre. This gave us a good understanding of what conventions to include in our own psychological thriller opening sequence.
In the opening sequence for the movie “Donnie Darko” and our own opening sequence for “Reinventing Your Exit” has a lot in common. Both opening sequences start off with a sense of enigma and tension which is built up by the use of music and lighting. In “Donnie Darko” the first thing we hear are thunder noises and as the scene starts to unravel and we are introduced to the main character sleeping in the middle of an empty road we hear eerie foreboding music, this mood is suddenly changed when the character gets on his bike and more upbeat music plays as he is riding into town. This technique is used to bring the audience back to reality. This is similar to our opening sequence, because the mood our thriller starts of is very dark and eerie, as we see black and white clips of the mental character there is some music to match the tension as it builds up, this however switches when the main character wakes up, the switch is not as abrupt as in Donnie Darko, but it is enough to notice and it builds up that enigma that is needed as the audience do not expect it. The switch is done by juxtaposing scenes, in both “Donnie Darko” and “Reinventing Your Exit” this is done by using different music and using different lighting and colouring to create different atmospheres.
Juxtaposing scenes in Donnie Darko
Juxtaposing scenes in Reinventing Your Exit
The opening sequence of “The Eye”
This effect of juxtaposing scenes is also present in the opening sequence of “The Eye” although there was much more of a scare factor in this opening scene rather than in “Donnie Darko” and “Reinventing Your Exit”. Our opening sequence and the opening sequence for “The Eye” are both similar in the sense that the scenes in the very beginning are very dark and eerie, although “The Eye” was more nerve wrecking and jumpy whilst ours is more mysterious and tension building. In “The Eye” I wasn’t sure if the opening scenes were part of a dream, premonition or a flashback, so as a viewer I was confused, but I think as the movie progresses so will my understanding. I think in our opening sequence we made it clear that the scenes at the beginning were part of a dream. I thought we used our knowledge of thriller conventions to our advantage. We used a black and white effect at the beginning the represent the dream, we did some shots at night and used dim lighting for a dark look overall, and we used eerie music to match the mood of the scenes.
Have you challenged conventions in your opening sequence?
According to our research on the conventions of psychological thriller movies, to create a successful thriller opening sequence we had to include a sense of darkness; which we achieved by going out and filming at night and by using low key lighting, a death/ murder; which we achieved by placing a clip of someone’s hand in a puddle of blood in the dream, tension building music; which we included in the dream and when the main character is by herself courtesy of Linkin Park and Nirvana, fast editing; we sped up the editing as the dream went on and matched the build up of the music, enigma; which we achieved by juxtaposing scenes and the eeriness of the dream at the very beginning, and finally an introduction to a mysterious antagonist/psychotic character; although there isn’t much about this character in the opening sequence we find out more about her as the narrative progresses, this is the same with the main character.
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