Break down of the opening -

This is the main title, we chose a white colour on a black background as this fits with the conventional aesthetics of a psychological thriller. The production title is a different font from the rest of the titles, as this usually occurs, as the production company are separate to the film and have their own logo/identity. This therefore looks more professional.

 This is the first shot, it is a long shot at eye level, and contains compressed time, so the actor walking towards the camera happens quicker than in reality, we made the transition between the compressed time cross dissolves, which made the pace slow and dreary. this is a fairly conventional shot, especially the hood that the character has and the silence of the location.

 This is a long pan of the location, it sets the location for the piece, whilst also establishing an eerie " something is about to happen" feel for the audience. We filmed it at an off angle so the camera wasnt level, giving a disorientated feel. The boy in the corner lying by the tree is supposed to signify something is wrong, he has suddenly died, and is now a mystery, he is therefore a signifier for what is to come.

 this shot is another slow pan, keeping the pace slow and building up tension. the bare wintery trees are very conventional and the almost black and white colours are quite scary and eerie. It is a high angle shot that pans in a circle, also disorientating the audience. it is supposed to feel odd and unnatural.


This is a worms eye view of the trees swaying, from the characters point of view as he suddenly opens his eyes, this is involving the audience, as they can see what he is seeing, it also gives a really nice mood. as you can see the tree's towering over you. it also continues with the audiences disorientation as they are not sure why they are on the ground, and it isnt very natural. and also is very conventional
with the swaying tree's.

 This is a CU birds eye view of the character blinking awake, it shows the audience that the character is unaware of his surroundings, and shows them his facial expression, which is shocked and confused.

 This is a mid shot and close up combined, the shot starts with the character getting up and looking around, then catching sight of the locket, the camera then switches focus to a close up of the locket. This therefore shows the audience his interest in the object, as well as showing them a close up detailed view of the object.

 this is a low angle long shot of the character lying on the floor, it shows the isolation of the area, as you can still trees, everything is very still, making it quite eerie. The use of a high angle is belittling him, making him look small and weak, which is what we wanted to show, as he is helpless.

 This is a high angle mid shot to close up of the character opening the locket, it gives us a view of his reaction, and the angle makes everything including his surroundings look very overpowering and scary.

 This is an extreme close up of the locket, the idea was that the audience would see a picture of the protagonist inside the locket, which would become the mystery of our psychological/mystery thriller, but it is unclear what is inside the locker, it is a nice over the shoulder shot though and is only brief in the opening.

 This is the final shot of the boy running through the trees, the camera titles as he runs further into the horizon, it is a very cliched shot, but is very effective, the rigid lines of the tree's has a nice effect, and it ends the piece with a long shot of the scenery, much as it began, so the opening is quite cyclic.

This is the final title, we chose the same aesthetics, and used an AfterEffects effect to make the title shake and jitter slightly, which is conventional in some psychological openings such as Se7en. we also used a jumbled letter effect which was a nice effect that backed up the genre.

Final cut - The Unheard

This is our final opening, with everything finished and edited. The black border was not in the original edited copy on premier, but appeared when we exported it, so we may need to sort this out as it uploaded to youtube very small. here it is :

Additional filming 1/04/2011

- we went out to the location to do some more shots to place at the beginning of our opening, originally the opening started with small clips of tree's at worms eye view, that looked like blinks. it was supposed to give the audience a feeling that they were looking at the sky, so they felt included, and could see what the character would be seeing. however, after reviewing the opening we felt the blinks were too robotic and didnt feel natural, and the effect wasnt working how we would have liked. we then decided to shoot some more footage, some location shots, to give a background and set the scene to the opening, as we were going straight in with the narrative orginally. this also gives a better background for the titles, and is something often seen in movie openings, such as Donnie Darko, which is a psychological thriller much like ours. This also gives more flow to the piece, and it starts off quite slow, with slow pans of still scenery, then builds up to a point, so the tension builds right and the piece works better as an opening, in the original edited version our peak was at the beginning and then the tension was lost towards the end, which didnt work right, so we have might a drastic change to how the piece flows and builds.
- we shot a compressed time piece, which was of a male protagonist walking towards the camera. with chunks of the walking cut our and a fade between the shots, to speed up the piece and give the illusion of time passing quite smoothly, it keeps the piece very fluid to start with, as we wanted the opening to begin slow paced and then pick up
- we did some panning long shots of tree's and woods, at an awkward off angle, somewhere between eye level and high angle shot, we also deliberately decided not to level the tripod, to give an eerie distorted feel.
- the use of the dead character lying by the tree makes the audience aware something is about to happen, it is also deliberately confusing and is something that will be later worked out in the film, as it is partly a mystery thriller, it would be explained why the boy had died so suddenly.

additional scene - the phone

we added a new scene onto the storyboard, of someone ringing the actor's phone, such as his mum, and being worried sick because he has been missing for a while and no one can contact him. we then decided not to use this additional scene, and use the sound from of it in the beginning as we watch the tree's swaying, as he has just passed out, he has dropped his phone without hanging up, and the person on the other end is trying to get hold of him, it makes it a little creepy. the person is supposed to sound worried and upset and makes the audience aware soemthing terribhle is happening.

evaluation of additional scene:
we chose not to use this additional scene after we had filmed it, because it did not flow with the piece. the sudden change of location was not something we wanted in our opening, asd we felt two minutes is too short to include two locations and make them make enough sense. the build up of tension is when the actor opens the locket, and then the phone scene after this let the build up die down and was lengthy and uninteresting. it was a fairly good idea but did not fit well with our vision for the piece and looked cheap, and our aim was to make our opening look as proffessional as possible. we therefore cut this scene out when we edited the film for the second time and chose to leave the ending as the boy running form the locket with the subtle fade to the end title, and leave that as the end.

Choosing music for the opening

we looked at some different tracks that were non copyright that we could freely download. we wanted something eerie and spooky sounding, something a little twinkly and creepy. we listened as a group to a few clips and settled on one perticular one, which we have used as the background track to the whole opening. we cut it and changed parts, slowed it down by 10% so it was slightly lower pitched and a bit slower, so it is deeper and darker . we also re positioned the peak of the music so that it fit with the peak of the tension in the film.

Deciding on a name

we had a group discussion a few weeks ago regarding the name for our movie opening, we thought about the themes in it and what happens and came up with a list of words, such as whisper, woods, dark etc. we then used a thesaurus to give us alternatives for some of the words to broaden our list, in the end be came up with two ideas, "Broken Whispers" and "The Unheard".

we felt The Unheard has a scarier feel to it, without giving too much of the plot away, it was more mysterious and the use of the word "the" makes it sound more effective and punchy, like in similar themed films such as "the ring" or "the grudge", it therefore fits in nicely with films of a similar genre.

we thought that broken whispers was a bit boring, not eerie enough, and doesnt fit the genre. It was a good starting point to build on, but sounds cliche and a bit tacky.

Final font choice

we chose a font called crappy dan, because of the childlike feel of it, and the eerie ness, it also not too cliche like some of the fonts we looked at, or too difficult to read, because this is also a problem as it is important people can read the credits in an opening or it wont be successful
here is what the font will look like:

The Unheard

the unheard

THE UNHEARD

we chose the one in complete lower case as it has a more childlike feel and aesthetically better. it is likely to be white on a black background like this:

the unheard

 it looks a bit like a childs writing on a chalkboard, this is the kind of effect that we were looking for.