My opening title sequence consists of many conventions of a typical Horror genre, one being my titles. My Titles have a smartly ragged look to them, this to reflect the film being edgy. My sequence opens with a title and therefore I wanted it to set the tone for the rest of the sequence. The font is red with a black background; the red giving indication that there will be danger in the film, also sign of blood, and the black to resemble my horror sequence being dark and not giving too much away to the audience, thus raising questions. Following the first title, the opening begins with point of view shots, focusing on a teenage girl (17 years old), in her home, being watched. Engaging with the audience is common throughout Horror sequences to draw their attention; I wanted to follow this in my sequence by putting my titles in places to break up the shots of the girl, indicating to the audience that they are missing certain scenes, which may be key to understanding the film more. The Idea and technique of using point of view shots for an opening came from the 1978 film Halloween, I believe the point f view shots engages and intrigues the audience to wanting to know who is watching, and why? The point of view shots also show the setting for most of the film, a big house. This also follows another convention as a young teenager living in a big house alone, the perfect setting for a horror to be set.
I then developed the conventions with the point of view shots, as I wanted to emphasise the fact this teenage is being watch very closely (stalking) by this person, who we do not know anything about. The points of views are to draw the audience more and more into the sequence, beginning to feel worried for the girl, who is completely oblivious to it. The girl is another convention of a horror sequence because the girl is always is the target of an attack and this is reflected through the point of view. This used in Halloween also.
Most conventions of a horror sequence begin their sequences very eerie and slow, with my sequence I wanted to show this in numerous ways, one being through my titles. When my titles appear they move ever so slightly every half a second to create a shaky movement, suddenly getting quicker, therefore showing how my titles control the pace of my sequence. From this platform I then complemented the music pace by the shots I used, especially for the point of view shots that I wanted to be jumpy and twisted, giving indication to the audience about this something watching the girl.
Through another convention of a typical horror sequence I chose not to have dialogue, this allowing my mise en scene to tell the story, also I didn’t want the dialogue to take the suspense away from the sequence therefore leaving it out as I felt it would take the edgy feel away and I didn’t want that. I also chose not to have any dialogue because I wanted the audience to focus on the setting of my sequence giving the audience various shots of where the film would be set and also focus on the main character, showing through her body language what is happening.
Another common convention of horror is the use of editing, editing of a horror sequence has various amount of shots been cut together to produce a sharp, quick pace sequence, one example of this being the opening of saw two, where lots of shots were produced and cut together so the sequence flows, but with lots of cuts of the various shots making the sequence fast paced. From watching I decided to do a similar technique by using various amounts of shots in my own sequence, I cut the shots together so they’re not lingering on the same shot for too long giving the sequence its pace to go with the music. I also used frequent cutting of the point of views to create a jumpy feel to the sequence, by cutting every half a second out and then placing the rest together created a jumpy, edgy feel to the sequence, also to engage the audience into the sequence and raising question to who or what it is watching this girl.