Film Opening Research

Here is an example of the opening to a horror film, this film is called 'The Shinning' thought to be one of the top horror films to date. The opening credits create a very uneasy feel for the viewer with the non-diegetic sound building tension. There is no specific horrific scene but the sound makes a viewer want to carry on viewing. This tells me that hone it comes to my final task sound is extremely important when trying to create tension. 

This is the opening scene to The Woman In Black I have personally seen this film and thought it was an excellent horror/thriller film. The film creates its horror scenes through frightening the audience by making them 'jump' with fear  by people and objects appearing on screen suddenly. This opening scene ends on a cliff anger encouraging the viewer to continue viewing the film as the opening scene is an impact seen with questions unanswered and shocking scenes. This would help me in my final task by deciding whether I would have a strong impacting opening scene.

This is the opening sequence to the 1978 hit 'Halloween' the opening credits are dated but that is because of the age of the film. The opening proves that horror films still have a similar narratives and follow the same codes and conventions. This opening again follows with the shock scenes and opening with action.

Here is the opening credits to the original movie Dawn Of The Dead. In these opening credits we see the narrative explained to us in short cut clips with scenes from around the country of a zombie attack. The short clips create tensions in the opening and create a narrative hook as as an audience we want to continue viewing to find out what caused this.   

This is the opening to the 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre which has been voted the 3rd best horror film of all time by timeout.com. The use of a black out creates high tension until the flash of the horrific images come up of screen making an audience jump right from the start, even though there is no physical action on screen only flashes of images. 

This opening has been taken from a recent film called 'Sinister' from the makers of Paranormal Activity.  The opening scene is very short and also is shocking to an audience, this is because they don't fit the codes and conventions and the audience witness the murder of what seems to be a family with children which is unusual. This opening has shown me that a horror film would only have to have one shocking scene to create a atmosphere.