Although our storyboard is quite short, we think that throughout the process of filming this opening if this is the idea we go through with we will make changes and we will probably make it longer. Our story is about a woman that cannot conceive her own children, so she is obsessed with the fact of having children. With this being said, she kidnaps a teenager and ends up keeping the teenager in her basement and treating them like a baby.
At the beginning of our story, we are planning to have a pan of the location to set the scene. we are then hoping to film the character that will be playing the woman (which will probably be Giselle) walking home. On her way home, she finds a 'MISSING' poster of the teenager she has kidnapped and we want to film her snatching them off the getting home in a panicked way.
We then want to film her getting to her doorstep where everything looks normal again. We see her go into the house and putting her stuff down, making tea, doing things we would consider normal. However, she then hears a bang and she begins to go downstairs to see what has happened as she knows the teenager is down there.
When she gets to the teenager, we see her with a teddy bear which she hands over to the teenager as a way of settling them down as she thinks and treats them like a baby. We are not yet quite sure how it is going to end but we think we have a rough idea. We want her too look really creepy at the end of the opening compared to how she looked at the beginning of the opening.
This is our Production Schedule for our thriller opening. We have diced on times all together and I have completed this schedule that will also be going up on our Pitch. We plan on following our schedule and we hope that this will allow us enough time to do everything that we need to do.
After editing the 'Arlington Road' clips, we found it easy to edit as we already had practice.
We knew how to use Final Cut pro better and we didn't need instructions on how to do things like incoporate text and add effects.
Cutting
We cut all the unncessacary slips out of the video to make sure that the audience made sense of it, when we felt it looked good we started adding titles.
Incoporating Titles
Following the conventional title sequence we added the titles in that order. We made sure to leave space between each title and that our title sequence ended when the image faded to ensure that it looked like an opening.
Music
The only thing we needed some help with was incoporating music into our opening as we had only done this a couple of times and the process can be confusing. We transfered our video into 'soundtrack pro', there we used music that built tension and suspense, we felt that this worked well with our video.
Here are some screen shots of when were used soundtrack pro.
As part of my reseach towards the Thriller genre, I have been watching films that catergorised under the genre. A film I watched recently is Fatal Attraction, this is my overall analysis of the film.
When I first started watching the film, I realised the simularities between it and a film I had already watched called 'Obsessed'. Both films were about a husband being unfaithful to his wife, and the woman that he had the affair with turning out to be obsessive. Inspiration from Fatal Attraction is further shown in Obsessed when through scenes is the movie.
The opening
The opening of the film is the simplest opening style, it is titles over a black screen, there is also no music to accompany the titles so in some ways I did find it slightly boring, but it also added tension as it kept me waiting to see what would happen next in the film, and the silence was actually effective because it would have been a shock if they chose to start the film with something frightning. This way I was kept on the edge to see what the film would bring.
Mise-en-scene and pace of the film
In comparison to modern Thrillers I had watched I felt that it the film moved at a very fast pace, In didn't really take time to build the characters that much so I hadn't made my mind up whether or not I cared when about the actions they were making. For example 'Dan' (the husband who has an affair on his wife) very quickly falls into a deep lust with Alex, at this point, which was extremely early on in the film I had not decided how I felt about Dan as a character, I don't think the camera had captured him being a loving husband and father to his family enough for the audience to care that he was having an affair. But I was shocked at how easily he gave in to Alex's attempt to seduce him, as if he had been waiting to cheat on his wife.
Characters
Alex (the mentally ill, obssesive woman who has an affair with Dan)
Initially I disliked Alex as a character very much, what made me feel this way towards her was the way she had an almost immediate obsession with Alex after their first conversation. She thought Dan was a man who would help her fulfill what she was missing in her life, and took the opportunity to trap him. In this way the audience begins to feel sorry for Dan as it seems as if her is being victimised by this woman. But as the film progresses it becomes apparant that Alex is mentally ill and probably went through a terrible past which made her this way.
Dan (the attorny who has an affair with Alex)
My feelings towards the character Dan were negative to begin with as I already knew he was going to cheat on Beth (his wife). What shocked me is how easily he gave into Alex's seduction, which made me think he had just been waiting for the opportunity to cheat on Beth. As the film progresses I do begin to feel sorry for Dan and the situation he has dragged himslef into. However a part of me does want Alex's attempts to make him take responsibility for what he has done be a success as it is unfair on his faithful wife who is ignorant to the situation, and also Alex although she makes unnessacary action for her point to be made.
Beth (Dan's wife)
Throughout the film I feel only sympathy for Beth. For a majority of the film she is oblivious to the fact that her husband is in this situation. It is only towards the end of the film that it is is revealed her that he had an affair- after this is to her knowledge she finds her self in unfortunate situations. She is sent to hospital after speeding on the road when she was searching for her child which Alex had. Then she is left to finish the mess that Dan created by shooting Alex. All in all she is a innocent woman who has been dragged into a fatal situation.
The ending
The film ends with the shooting of Alex in Beth's bathtub. Honestly is comes to a speedy ending with the police and Dan's front door and a still shot of a family picture of Dan his wife and child.
I do not mind that the ending was somewhat fast as the film did fulfill my expectations and was interesting and enjoyable to watch.
Also music was used effectively to startle and shock the audience.
Editing of the prelim was much like editing our remake or Arlington Road, except we knew what shot went where. We still had to find music on Sountrack Pro to fit the scenes and the motion of the opening sequence.
We first put it into Final Cut, and put all of our footage together, we made sure everything looked smooth and hadn't broken the 180 degree rule. We then started adding titles, with 3 seconds in between each. We decided to put them on the sides because this would allow for the audience to see the action.
We then transferred it into Soundtrack Pro, where we added suspenseful music, and some sound effects to make it sound realistic, then we put it back into Final Cut, added the soundtrack and finalised everything to make it suitable for our blog.
Filming the prelim turned out to be harder than we all expected. We had to film the same shots a number of times because we would forget minor details which could ruin the illusion, for example, in some shots we had, the light was dimmer than other shots. We also had to make sure that the subjects were in the frame, so we would have to do the scene without filming then redo and film it again.
Our facial expressions also had to show what the scene was trying to portray, we had to stay focused on being mysterious and tense so the audience would be able to see that this was a thriller. It was hard because we would get into character and then snap out of it as it had to be so serious.
As we had a brief that we needed a match cut and shot reverse shot, we incorporated that well as a match cut can reveal an object or certain thing that would give the scene more tension. The shot reverse shot was shown through a conversation.
We used a small room outside of our class, but we didn't realise how small and dark the room as when we turned of the lights, we had trouble figuring out where we would place the camera without breaking the 180 degree rule. We also had trouble because of the lighting, on the camera screen, it was just enough light to be able to see our faces, but on a bigger screen the lighting was bad, so we got a Dedo light which resolved the problem.
Soundtrack Pro is a software that allows non-diegetic sounds like music and sound effects to be put on a soundless piece of footage. It was good to learn about because we would have to use it to make or final thriller opening, as there are a lot of steps involved to be able to process a piece of footage. We had to go back and forth between Soundtrack Pro and Final Cut to make sure everything was in top shape. But overall it was a good experience and having this knowledge will benefit us.
Foley sound is making realistic sound that is not shot in the real footage. We re-made the opening to the film 'Arlington Road'. We got the footage without sound, therefore we had to make our realistic sounds to fit the action and the scenes shown in the footage.
We got a camera and recorded Carina walking (quite loudly) and also breathing heavily, to create the boys physical state, we thought these worked well as the boy in the footage looked dizzy and the footage was slightly distorted at some parts. Heavy breathing is also a convention of a thriller when the subject is alone or when mysterious scenes are shot, this adds intensity to a scene.
It was fun to re make because we had to think about what would suit the scenes the best, we watched the clips numerous times before we made up our minds about what we should do. We decided that no dialogue was going to be filmed, as it would make the footage more dramatic and tense.
The reason why there is more or less a similar order to most movie opening title sequences is because some names and positions in the film industry are more important than others, for example the directors and distributors and basically in charge of making and allowing the film to be publicly shown and to gain profit and income from all the hard work. Here are two examples of different openings of movies.
The title of the actor that is most important usually has more screen time than other actors, it is usually on for 3-4 seconds. This also applies to the Film title itself.
I chose to watch 'Orphan' a psychological thriller. Released in 2009. The plot is about a 'young' girl (Esther) that is adopter by a 'normal' family, Esther however has unresolved mysteries about who she is and where she comes from, the adoptive mother gets suspicious when bad things start to happen while Esther is present & everything becomes revealed.
It starts with a narrative opening, a dream one of the main characters had. The title of the film is shown after the indents of the production and distribution companies. It is on a black background, & is first shown to us in the middle of the screen, with plain white font, which then transforms into a distorted font that is made out to be in UV glow paint, to contrast to the background. The music added to this is eery and quite quiet, & an added crackle sound- similar to that of a faulty lightbulb- is heard when the title switches back and forth. The title is also not too big, because the changing fonts and colours will have a strong impact on the viewers mind already. The UV paint also becomes significant later in the story, allowing the audience to identify key elements.
Towards the beginning of the film, the atmosphere between Esther and her new family seems to be normal, happy to start a new life with her new family. Therefore the mise-en-scene is portrayed to be normal as well. The scenery is bright (as it is snowing). But when things turn ugly most of the action happens and night or in the afternoon, where the scenery is darker therefore more mysterious. Esther herself also wear a lot of dark dresses and has black hair, which contrasts to her pale skin. The performance is also normal, a working mother and husband with two kids of their own adjusting to a third child. They are a modern American family. Esther however wears very different clothing and has an accent. Already making her stand out from the family. She usually wears 'Little Bow Peep' outfits, choker and velvet ties around her wrists.
When the mother begins to suspect that there is something unordinary about Esther, the scenery changes and the atmosphere is tense. For example, there is a change of music from quiet, soft and calm soundtrack to a tense eery soundtrack. Ester also had her own sound motif, it varied from scene to scene but the audience could predict that something strange was about to happen. This allowed the audience to engage and possibly relate to the character. Sound bridges also allow the audience to suggest that two scenes are linked together and tension starts to rise.
The camera work in 'Orphan' are a range of shots, usually when something bad is about to happen, the scene is shown in a wide/long shot, to allow the audience to engage in what they are seeing and predict what may happen next. When showing possibly a tool or an object that is significant, they would usually close up on it to show that it may become a problem in the coming scenes. A lot of high angled shots are also used when Esther talks to Max, the biological daughter. As Esther is older and controls Max in doing all the 'dirty work'. But a lot of low angled shots are used when the mother talks to Esther, showing that the mother overpowers her and also shows the convention of 'good overcomes evil'.
Our prelim turned out to be very good. We managed to put it up on the blog in time and we finished it to the way we wanted it to be finished. Our prelim included the shots we wanted it to include as well as having the impact on us as an audience that we wanted. The filming came out better than I expected due-to the fact that we were filming in an extremely tight space. We had open areas as shown in the print screen on the right where we had more space to film, however it was still a challenge because although we had space, people kept on walking past so we had to stop a few times. Although we had to work in other tight spaces, we were alone and we were not being interrupted which made the filming process much faster.
The only change I would make about the whole prelim process was the fact that we took quite a long time to edit as we are all perfectionists in the group. I think we should work on trying to work at the same level but doing so faster so that we do not fall behind with any of our work. If I were to film another prelim I would probably spend more time planning the places in which I am going to be filming and making sure we have the correct equipment. When we began filming, we thought we would not need a light although we were filming in a dark room, however as we started filming, we realised that we needed a light so we had to interrupt our filming again to go and get the light.
Filming the prelim was another good experience that allowed us to get more comfortable using the camera as well as allowing us to practice things like our camera angles and types of shots. I really enjoyed filming as I was behind the camera and I tried to use the shot types that had been decided by the group. We work very well as a group and we tried to make the filming an enjoyable experience by getting all our work done in the time that we were supposed to.
I found it quite hard to move the camera around on the tripad as the room was very small and I had a limited space. I had to try to do the best I could to make it look good on camera. That was the only challenging thing about filming our prelim.
EDITING:
Editing our prelim was also a lot of fun. We done all the editing together and again, we were able to work on our skills as we used Final Cut Pro as well as Soundtrack. The editing process was fun as we got to try out different things as well as experimenting with sounds that we would use on our video from Soundtrack. We did not have any problems while we were editing our prelim.
Having said that, we did face a little problem. We ran out of time a little but so as a group, we decided to stay in at break time in order to finish our work. I think a good target for us is to be able to edit our work faster to the same ability.
This lesson we were introduced to Soundtrack. When we were editing our Arlington road clips to make them our own, we also had to use Soundtrack to include sound into our final piece. We are not aloud to use sound off YouTube as it would be considered copy right, so we had to create our own sounds or sue the ones available to us on Soundtrack.
We used Soundtrack the sound we created ourselves which were footsteps and heavy breathing to make our re-edit more intense.
This is Soundtrack again, however in this print screen we had already put some sound into our work and we were moving things around and seeing what we could do to make all the sounds go well together.
This is our work finished and in the print screen above you can see that we were waiting for our clip to be suitable to put up on our blog. We learnt a lot about how to use both Final Cut Pro as well as Soundtrack and it is going to be absolutely crucial when coming to edit our thriller opening as these are the programmes we are going to be using.
We had to re-edit some clips that were given to us from the opening of Arlington Road and had to use the clips to make our own version of the opening using final cut pro to do so.
Here are the clips that were given to us once we opened them up onto Final Cut Pro. We then viewed all of the videos and we saw what order it would best look in. We then put the videos in one by one and slowly started editing them so that they would make sense in the order we were placing them in.
In the picture we can see that we then began to put in titles when we were finished which was also quite fun.
We used this button to create the titles and we then put them onto the video by dragging them onto the video and then dropping it but first we would have to make sure they were placed within the lines otherwise they would not show up if they were to be shown somewhere like the cinema. It is very important to follow the rules when editing as it can take a very long time and re-doing something due-to a little mistake could cost a lot of money or waste a lot of time in the real world.
We then begun putting everything together and into order so that everything would make sense. We decided to put our titles on the corners of the screen as we did not want them to interfere or get in the way of the action. We done this purposely and I think it was perfect as we were still able to concentrate on the action although we saw that the credits were there.
I really enjoyed using Final Cut Pro because of the different skills I got from using it and also because of the fact that it may come to help me in my future life.
This is a power point to demonstrate some of the ideas that my group and I had. We spent some time going over some ideas and we found that these were the best ones:
My group and I were looking at the conventional order of two different videos. We found that the producers and distributors always came first as they were the people that came up with the money to make the film in the first place. Then the title of the movie would usually come up straight after before anything else, however sometimes if the actor is someone like Brad Pitt who is a huge star, his name will come first, In these two cases, the title came first and then the names of the actor began appearing starting with the main actor. Also if there is a very important actor, they will come at the end of the actor's list with an 'and' or a 'with' before their name. After the actors, the most important people that are part of the crew are shown. People such as editors, D.O.P, casting directors and music supervisors. Then right at the end, people such as executive producers, producers, writers and directors will come. They are left until last because they are some of the most important people. The most important people will be left until last or they will come up at the beginning.
I have analysed two film openings over the holidays and I have looked at how they use the four conventions to make their opening a good one.
I watched the ANNIE film from 1999 and I really enjoyed it. Although it was quite old, the conventions of a film opening were still all there and I noticed them all.
When the film starts, immediately we see the film name come on on the screen in a bright red, bold font with a yellow background which caught my attention. Also, I could see that the videos shown at the beginning were edited as they looked to be so. This helped to make the film not look as old as it is and it also made the film more interesting to watch. The titles all appear in the middle of the screen but does not however block from any action because the beginning is a discrete opening as it shows where the film is going to be set, however it does not give away anything.
Also, when the film starts we hear a very cheerful song, which will put the audience in a happy mood and therefore means the film will have a positive outlook overall.
With the camera work, it is quite simple. It is mostly zooming in and out of the setting. We are able to see where the film is going to be set. There is no complicated camera work involved as it is an older film, however it is still very amusing to watch.
The mise-en-scene also made the film very interesting to watch. The actors were dressed in very specific costumes and had very specific props. I could see that they done this for a reason as the film is supposed to be in olden times.
HOLES:
The second film I watched was Holes. I really enjoyed watching it as I have already studied it and watching the film was really fun as I got to see the book come to life.
The mise-en-ecene in this film is very specific. This is mainly so that the audience can see the difference between the city and out of the city. The film begins in a rural area where young boys are sent when they have to complete community service for a felony they have commited, however there are various scenes in the city. In the opening we are only introduced to the boys in the rural area therefore we can only see what they are wearing. They are all dressed the same, in orange monkey suits which is crucial as they are 'prisioners'. However, the generals and the adults that supervise them have costumes like cowboy hats and boots. This made it more fun to watch because all the boys were dressed the same and it was good to see that somebody was dressed differently to them.
There was not much editing in the opening of Holes. Most of the editing came from the titles which were quite simple and unlike Annie's title sequence, did not interrupt the action going on.
The camera work consisted mostly of long shots of the characters. However there were also other camera shots like extreme close ups like when the rattle snake is about to attack the boy. That caused suspense making the opening quite exciting as we didnt know what was going to happen from there.
The sound is mostly non-diegetic as when it starts we hear a song playing. However, as the action starts, we hear the voices of some of the characters. Also, we hear the noise that the rattle snake makes which is very significant as the film goes on.
I really enjoyed watching both films but I think I enjoyed watching Holes more as it is a more recent film and the editing is better making the film more interesting to watch.
My group and I have not come to a definite conclusion on the type of opening we would like to create, but when we were generating ideas most of them sounded like a Narrative opening.
We all really liked the idea of doing an opening to suite a psychological-thriller. Together we came up with an idea to make a mentally unstable middle aged woman the main character of our thriller, she will be the character to get a lot a screen time if we decide to do a narrative opening.
In most Psychological thrillers the characters true personality is hidden at the beginning of this film to shock the audience later, we decided that this technique was effective so we would make the woman seem like a very average, kind and maybe even popular individual with a dark secret.
We went further to discuss how the camera would capture this storyline. This is what I imagine it might be like:
- A middle aged ordinary woman, who appears to be relatively normal is walking through a busy area in London.
- We build the character by showing they have a kind personality through short interactions with other people.
- The woman is walking home with a slight smile on her face which might strike the audience as weird or strange but not enough for any serious suspicion.
- As she is approaching the door to enter her home a battered doll baby drops out of her bag, someone gives it back to her and she snatches it back, with a shocked look on her face.
- She opens the door to her home, her mise-en-scene has changed drastically, she is no longer calm and collected, she is anxious to get inside.
- When she opens the door, we see her house is filled with old and new dolls of every kind.
We are not sure how exactly we will end the opening, at first we were so filled with ideas we has come up with many ways in which the woman could interact with the dolls that were in her house, then we realised that what we were planning would be to long for an opening so we would have to have less action and make it shorter.
To help me come up with more ideas to improve our opening I am going to watch more Psychological- Thrillers.
One that I have already watched and really enjoyed is 'The Stepfather', the opening of the film helped me understand how to effectively disguise a deadly personality of a character.
This is the full film:
Films I have already seen but will watch again to help inspire me creatively are Obsessed and Orphan.
Thrillers I will watch soon are Fatal Attraction and Memento.
At the beginning of the movie, it takes quite a while until we see who the man truely is and what he is truely doing. The introduction to the character is very slow and he seems very normal and I think that was done purposely just so that we can feel the suspense even more. When we then realise that he is a serial killer, we then understand why the introduction to the 'normal-looking' side of him is so long.
Right at the beginning of the movie, the character apperas to be so normal due-to the props used. Even the fact that he has cut himself shaving anf he puts a piece of tissue over it is quite normal. The house looks very ordinary and when we follow him into the kitchen, we get an even bigger sense that he is normal due-to the way it looks.
We see the character making his breakfast like a normal person would. The use of the bread popping up from the toaster suggests that he may look normal at first, but the sudden popping up of the bread may forshadow that something maybe unexpected is going to happen.
The first thing we hear as the film starts is this creepy and sinister non-diegetic music which goes on upto when he gets downstairs, where this holy music then starts playing but a very slow and quite scary version of the music. We then begin to realise that there may be something wrong with this man.
With the camera work, it is all normal until a certain point. There are all types of shots like long shots, close ups and medium shots throughout the opening. Also, when the character goes into the kitchen, the camera tracks him which also made it more interesting when I was watching it. However, when the weird things started coming up like the people that were dead, the camera adapted different camera angles.
With this angle on the left, we can see that it makes the film much more diverse and interesting to watch as again it forshadows that bad things are going to happen throughout the movie.
The editing of the opening of 'THE STEPFATHER' is simple yet effective. It has a narrative opening and the titles are also quite simple and do not get in the way of the action. The titles all appear in the same manner and they are also all in the same font. They come up on the screen in a 'floaty' type of way which looks mysterious and emphasises on the Thriller genre.
I noticed that all the titles were in the correct order. The film title came after the producers and the distributors and the actors began coming up after that. It followed the order of the conventions of a film opening and it was therefore very enjoyable to watch.
I looked at the work that some previous students completed and I analysed it quite thouroughly. The video I looked at kept me interested due-to the different camera shots and the very unique editing.
When I began watching the video, I was intregued by the editing straight away. I really liked the way that the whole image was black and white then there was the huge contrast between the black and white and the red. The fact that the red is the only coloured thing in the whole beginning is very significant as it gives us the idea that the rest of the film is going to be quite gruesome due-to the red being used to symbolize blood. Also, the fact that the blood is consistent throughout is also significant. When the titles are coming up, they always come up in the same way with traces of blood under them. The fact that they followed through with the idea of the blood throughout is good because it will not confuse the audience and will help them understand the opening better.
With the mise-en-scene, the fact that they used a paintbrush was extremely clever as the film is called 'STROKE' so it makes sense to have a paintbrush. When the boy in the video touches his face and there is blood left on his face, it is also very clever and the boys body language suggests that he is nervous and it goes well with the fact that he's wiping blood on his face.
The sound that was used was also extremely clever as it went very well with the video. The non-diegetic music that was used consisted of violins playing quite sinister and negative music. It goes from loud to quite back to loud a few times throughout the opening and its effective as the music makes us feel that much more scared and interested to see what is going to happen.
With the camerawork, most of it was close ups on either the paint and the paintbrush or the actor. There are also upwards pans as well as normal pans across the room which is giving us an idea of what the whole plave looks like.
This clip caught my eye because the way the students thought carefully in the way they portrayed the mystery. They have used discreet opening, therefore the story behind is a mystery which allows the audience to make their opinion on what the film may be about.
The music fits perfectly with the scenes, the eery and untuned sound of the violins allows the scene to feel more mysterious. From the music, I can suggest this is a psychological thriller, or possibly a horror/thriller.
The students used a black fade between shots to add a dramatic effect when a new shot would take place. This emphasises the 'thriller' structure of openings, as it allows the audience to anticipate what shot could be shown next.
The editing of colour splash on only the red signifies a darkness behind the storyline, the bold red stands out in contrast to the black and white background, therefore the colour red may be important in the story. Red also signifies danger and blood, leading the audience to suggest the film may be of a horror/psychological thriller genre.
The titles are small in order for the action to remain the focus of the opening, but the title of the film is is in big letters, and different font to the smaller titles, this allows the audience to be able to identify the movie.
A lot of close ups on the persons face and paint supplies doesn't let the audience engage in the settings of the room, giving it mystery, and also labelling it as a discreet title opening. This makes it effective because a lot of other psychological/supernatural/action thriller openings also use this technique to add drama to the scene.
As part of my reseach towards the Thriller genre, I have been watching films that catergorised under the genre. A film I watched recently is Fatal Attraction, this is my overall analysis of the film. 
When I first started watching the film, I realised the simularities between it and a film I had already watched called 'Obsessed'. Both films were about a husband being unfaithful to his wife, and the woman that he had the affair with turning out to be obsessive. Inspiration from Fatal Attraction is further shown in Obsessed when through scenes is the movie. 
It starts with a narrative opening, a dream one of the main characters had. The title of the film is shown after the indents of the production and distribution companies. It is on a black background, & is first shown to us in the middle of the screen, with plain white font, which then transforms into a distorted font that is made out to be in UV glow paint, to contrast to the background. The music added to this is eery and quite quiet, & an added crackle sound- similar to that of a faulty lightbulb- is heard when the title switches back and forth. The title is also not too big, because the changing fonts and colours will have a strong impact on the viewers mind already. The UV paint also becomes significant later in the story, allowing the audience to identify key elements. 
After the actors, the most important people that are part of the crew are shown. People such as editors, D.O.P, casting directors and music supervisors. Then right at the end, people such as executive producers, producers, writers and directors will come. They are left until last because they are some of the most important people. The most important people will be left until last or they will come up at the beginning. 
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Also, when the film starts we hear a very cheerful song, which will put the audience in a happy mood and therefore means the film will have a positive outlook overall. .png)
The mise-en-scene also made the film very interesting to watch. The actors were dressed in very specific costumes and had very specific props. I could see that they done this for a reason as the film is supposed to be in olden times. .png)
The camera work consisted mostly of long shots of the characters. However there were also other camera shots like extreme close ups like when the rattle snake is about to attack the boy. That caused suspense making the opening quite exciting as we didnt know what was going to happen from there. 
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With the camera work, it is all normal until a certain point. There are all types of shots like long shots, close ups and medium shots throughout the opening. Also, when the character goes into the kitchen, the camera tracks him which also made it more interesting when I was watching it. However, when the weird things started coming up like the people that were dead, the camera adapted different camera angles. .png)
The editing of the opening of 'THE STEPFATHER' is simple yet effective. It has a narrative opening and the titles are also quite simple and do not get in the way of the action. The titles all appear in the same manner and they are also all in the same font. They come up on the screen in a 'floaty' type of way which looks mysterious and emphasises on the Thriller genre. 
