RESEARCH: The conventions of film openings.

We watch some openings of thrillers in class and discussed the conventions of film openings. Some of the main aspects of the opening of a thriller include:

• The hook: a teaser of the narrative
• Special effects/ sounds effects
• Music: this is used to build tension
• The production company's/producer's ident
• The titles: these include the production company, main cast, the film's name, other cast members and the directors. The order in which these appear varies between films, for example, the actors may appear before the director if they are more famous.
• In some cases, an insight is given into themain characters of the film or the location of the thriller may be told.
• The audience are able to have a sense of the film's mood. 

One of the film openings we watched was 'The shinning'. In this opening, the order of the titles were: production company, main cast, the film's name, featuring cast and then the directors. 
I liked the use of music in this thriller as the tension that is built is in contrast to the scenery. This helps to add suspense and make it clear to the audience that something will happen. The car is also tracked, this shows that it will be important in the narrative.

Another opening that we looked at was 'Seven'. This was extremely different to 'The shinning' and I found that it built alot more tension as there were a variety of shots which gave an insight to what the film was going to involve.

The film director and actor's names were shown on a black screen as well as overlapping the shots. Below are some examples of this.

The order of the titles followed the conventions of film opening's as the movie stars were shown before those involved in the making of the film. The opening also used music to add suspence and helped to give a sense to what the film may be about without revealing any information.