My film title sequence, “Caught in the Web”, both challenges and conforms to conventions of actual opening sequences. Our dialogue develops the use of technology within the horror/thriller genre. “Phone Booth”, a thriller (Schumacher 2002) and “The Ring”, a horror (Verbinski 2002) both use phones as tools for the basis of their plot. “Caught in the Web” is a cross-over of these genres, and develops the use of technology by dialogue through internet forums. The camera angles create an intimacy which draws the audience into the action, heightening the viewing experience.
Form
We studied the conventions of existing opening sequences: (http://latymerfoundationlaura09.blogspot.com/search/label/opening%20sequences)
- Establish key characters
- Titles throughout
- Introduction of narrative
- Indication of themes
- Showing the production company name and logo (“Hand Print Productions”)
- Showing the title of the film
- Dialogue (mostly face-to-face)
Having many shots of computer screens, typing and weapons, along with the first victim saying “I just want it all to end” tells the audience our main themes are suicide, murder, abuse and the internet. This is apparent within the first two minutes, creating tension and letting them know what to expect. We flash the name of the forum, “suicidesupport.org”, to point at the theme of suicide.
We used the convention of showing the film title at the end of the opening sequence. Our title, “Caught in the Web”, anchors the shots of keyboards, forums and computers because “the Web” is another name for the Internet, and “Caught in the Web” is a well-known phrase. This double-entendre makes it a good title for our film.
Audience feedback reflected that our title sequence did what it was meant to - everyone remembered the title and wanted to watch the rest of the film (except for one person who didn’t like horror/thrillers).
Genre
Our genre is horror/thriller. We narrowed our research down to successful horror/thriller openings, and watched many opening sequences, including “Halloween” (Carpenter 1978), “Seven” (Fincher 1995), “The Shining” (Kubrick 1980), “Face Off” (Woo 1997) and “Jaws” (Spielberg 1975).
We found:
- The music is often in a minor key, giving it the menacing feel of a horror/thriller, for example in “Jaws”. They only use two notes, one semitone apart, however this motif is so clever that when anyone hears that, they think of jaws. Like in “Jaws”, the music in “Caught in the Web” is non-diegetic.
- The victims are introduced in a similar way to other genres, but the villains’ identity is delayed – suspension of disbelief (“Halloween”). Our villain’s identity is slightly delayed.
- Pace of editing a nd action is changed effectively – slow to build tension, choppy to get the heart racing.
- The mise-en-scene is often darker, with key iconography including weapons (knives, guns).
When making our film, we thought about existing successful films in our genre. We realised that success is down to utilising tried and tested conventions that audiences love, so we thought it best to follow the leaders. Individuality then comes from themes and editing styles. We decided to play it safe when it came to breaking conventions in our opening sequence, because we wanted to focus more on producing a professional-looking film.
Opening sequences often involve only one character, or characters are often in the same location. In “Caught in the Web” there are three characters introduced; the victim (Emma) is in a different location to the Antagonists (two men). Later in the film, the protagonist (‘final girl’) is introduced, which is challenging the convention of introducing the main character in the beginning. We thought it would be more interesting to show two different locations (both in London), and thanks to our study of Levi-Strauss, we could use the obvious binary opposites between the two locations and character groups, the “good” and the “bad”, to their full potential (more in Q2).
Style
Having studied continuity in depth, we chose to use seamless editing so we could exhibit our skills. In contrast, we used a choppy montage at the end to pick up the pace and heighten the tension. We used a sound bridge (printing noise) between a shot of Emma crying and “Julie” (the main villain) getting the print-out, to link them and further inform the audience of where the men are heading.
“Casino Royale” (Campbell 2006) has an inspiring opening sequence which has influenced the way in which I styled my sequence. It illustrates its themes (gambling, murder) using the title, “Casino Royale” and by an animation sequence which depicts cards and guns. Similarly, we illustrated our themes in our opening sequence.
Our shot distances range from Extreme Close Up (ECU) to Extreme Long Shot (ELS) to show facial expression and establish the scene. In the montage we used other angles: Low Angle, Over The Shoulder (OTS), Point Of View (POV) etc. to give it an edgy feel, as well as using a master shot for each location.
We didn’t use Todorov’s classic narrative pattern (equilibrium à disruption à resolution à new equilibrium) because we wanted to shock our audience. We started with disruption - the girl already in conversation with someone she thinks is a different person. This is, however, the men’s equilibrium because they do this all the time. This is similar to “Scream” (Craven 1996)
because the disruption happens early on. In our film, the girl shown, Emma, is not the main victim (‘final girl’), she is just there to add to the body count and expose the men’s characteristics to the audience.
We want “Caught in the Web” to end on disruption, which challenges the conventional narrative pattern. We want our audience to go away thinking about what could happen after the film finishes, because leaving something unresolved is what the audience expects at the end of a good thriller.
Conventional narrative techniques helped our sequence make sense; most of it was filmed in real time, but we used ellipsis (e.g. between when Emma asked “Julie” to come over, and “Julie” printing the address) because some parts of the story were unnecessary to show. We used cross-cutting between the men and the girl, and kept to the 180° rule. Non-linear editing allowed flexibility, and it was easy to back up and save our work.
Drawing from our study of Barthes, we used many action/enigma codes, for example, one of the male characters packing a briefcase with weapons. Obviously, this shows the audience what he is doing, but also is an enigma code, because it implies what he is planning to do with the torture tools.
We go against Propp's theory because "Caught in the Web" is not a folk tale, and does not have the standard 8 character roles. In Propp's theory, there are 31 functions which are always highly predictable, such as the villains being punished at the end of the story. "Caught in the Web" doesn't do this, as we leave our story open-ended, and it being part-thriller, means it is in no way predictable.
