Opening Sequence

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First Idea

My first idea, which is the one I didn't go along with, was to base my opening sequence around Action movies. I was only able to come up with only one example for this one as a lot of Acton intro's are based in big cities such as New York. My first example is the opening sequence to Die Hard with a Vengeance, which shows scenes from a sun rise in a city - which was possible to do in Kings Lynn. Although I didn't get very far with this idea, I still had the target audience planned. Mainly, my target audience was people between the age of 15 to 40 and mostly male as action is stereotypically seen as 'manly' - however, not always the case as female audiences have been known to see an action more than men in some cases.

Secondary Sources for my First Idea









My second idea for an opening sequence was to make it a horror, and base it around movies that where both new and old as this will capture the diversity of all horror movies. My target audience is largely based around people (male and female) between the age of 15 to 25. I've decided on this audience demographic as most teenagers and young adults enjoy the thrill of horror and that this genre is more likely to entertain a younger audience compared to an older one.




I only did one story board; some writing to describe it too. Initially, I had a scene with my cat, a desk and a knife, however I removed these as they where difficult to make look realistic and the cat didn't seem to be in a modelling mood. Alternatively, I decided to film more ominous shots of the house and added a statue - which created a further link between my opening sequence and The Exorcist introduction (the scene with the Virgin Mary figurine).


Secondary Sources for Second Idea


I chose the IT (2017) intro, by Director Andy Muschietti, as is begins with an archway. Similarly, I planned on having a zoom through an archway to focus on the Doll in the cellar. I feel that this shot of the Doll communicates a ominous and gelid occupancy to the audience, this shows the audience that movie is a horror and that the Doll plays an important part. I like the graphics of the "IT" title and the way it appears, rotates and gets closer to the screen as the tunnel gets bigger too, I might use this idea in my opening sequence, however, I also like the idea of switching between fonts to present a sence of malfuntioning in the scene.
Secondly, I chose this opening sequence to director William Freidkin's, The Exorcist (1973) as it gives detail of a house at night time. Although in my opening sequence we see little detail of the outside of a house as it is too dark, it is certainly where I got my inspiration from to film both the outside and inside of a house. As well as this, The Exorcist opening also shows a figurine of, what I assume to be, The Virgin Mary. Comparably, I used a statue/ figurine of a lady in my opening sequence. Albeit, it was a last minute idea to capture some footage of this statue, however, it did turn out that I needed this footage as my original idea was to have a shot of my cat - which didn't turn out well as he didn't want to be on camera long enough for a usable scene. Although this movie is old, it still appeals to my target audience as it is similar to what TV Shows such as Supernatural and other horror movies like The Nun (2018) - which are both related to demons/ demonic possession.
Lastly, director James Wan's, The Conjuring (2013) is what inspired me to include the creepy possessed Doll down in the cellar. Although the Doll used in The Conjuring has significant damage to it to make it look even more creepy, I was unable to do this as the Doll was not my property and was extremely old. 

My three examples all link to my opening sequence idea as they all have the same - if not similar- target audience, as well as this, they are all horror.

Finished Opening Sequence



Editing together my footage was fairly easy as I am quite confident with editing, however I did have to ask how to scale the last scene to be the same size as all of the others as it was significantly smaller than the rest. I did this by clicking on the clip in the timeline and then on the Effects Controls in the Souce window. More effects will show up, you can find Position and Scale in the drop down of Motion.



Next, I added the credits to my footage. In graphics, you can add boxes of text and then change the look, opancity and font at whatever point on the timeline you want. In my opening sequence, I switch between two or more fonts with the primary font being Chiller. The opacity is useful to create a fading effect on your text, which is why I used it as it conveys suspense - this is useful in my opening sequence as it is a horror.

This video is all of the footage I gathered without it being edited, this way you can see the difference between my finished sequence and what it used to be.



The music I used was taken from a loyalty free music website called Epidemic Sound. They allow you to download three songs for free so I decided to download three that apply to my genre.
All three of these songs create suspense and a eerie atmosphere to my opening sequence - which is what I was aiming for.


When editing, I noticed that the scene with the doll was extremely bright compared to the rest of the footage, so I used Lumetri Colour to make it darker and match the other footage. As well as this, I also used different types of Effects such as Camera Blur for the scene with the statue to create a distortion effect and convey shock and blindness to the audience.

(Lumetri Colour)
(Other Effects and Camera Blur)

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