American Psycho: voice over inspiration

Mac 5 have decided to use a voice over in our two minute opening, as we feel that it is an uncommon feature in our genre, which we aim to challenge.
However, we chose to use this technique because psychological thrillers are often told in a first person narrative, leaving the audience in the dark to create suspension and we think this is particularly important if we want to keep our audience engaged.
We also think that this technique creates more intimacy between the film and the audience, which is something we would like to explore using both sound and visuals, to add to the uncomfortable atmosphere felt by the audience.

The introduction of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000), near the very beginning of the film, is one of the few psychological thrillers which uses a voice over to present a character to the audience. Here is the clip:


We are currently on the search for the perfect voice, and we are using this clip to demonstrate what tone of voice to use, to create a similar feeling of oddity - we think that this ties in nicely with the disorientated character which is revealed to the audience, making the opening all the more sinister and perhaps more intriguing for the audience.

Donnie Darko: shot and sound inspiration

Donnie Darko (2001) is one of the weirdest, yet most captivating movies I've ever seen. Here is the rather bizarre opening, it is sort of split into two parts - a bit like on our storyboard:

This close up of Donnie's pupils dilating is one of my favourites because it is super trippy, and Mac 5 really like the emphasis on eyes - when we were searching for our actress, one of the main deciding factors was the colour of her eyes and our actress, Hannah C, has fantastic blue eyes which fit the role perfectly!




Donnie is also seeing a therapist, who prescribes him pills (that end up being placebo's). Donnie's behaviour is strange nonetheless, and the possibility of him having a mental illness isn't lost in the many alternative explanations of the movie.





Here are a few more cool stills which I could find:

This scene, in which the mirror ripples, is pretty peculiar (though important when explaining the film). It is also very inspiring in terms of sound - Frank sounds almost like a microwave, and the low bass drone in the background makes the viewer feel as if they are inside a television which is really effective in emphasizing the idea of Frank influencing the thoughts inside Donnie's head.



Though our character doesn't cross over and enter a tangent universe, she does have controlling thoughts which we would like to emphasize in our opening, and we would like Frank's tone and the mood these sounds create to have a similar effect in our opening.

Here are two more scenes which I really like:


 

Hurtwood House Media

So last lesson, we watched the film openings produced by a school called Hurtwood House. We found out that with the ridiculous amount of money they have to spend, they filmed their openings with Sony NX5 camera's, using paid actors. We watched a few of their openings, and some of them were actually pretty inspiring such as this one below, which has some really cool angles and close ups in it:



My favourite in last year's playlist however, was by far the very darkly humorous opening shown below. This guy is possibly the most entertaining actor I have ever watched...

Se7en

In our last few lessons, we have been watching se7en, directed by David Fincher, as a class.

This opening sequence was ranked by IFC as the third greatest title sequence of all time, and is one of the most memorable:

The sequence is a montage of unnerving close ups, giving the viewers an insight into the killers mind, and an intimate view of his artistic expressions. The use of extreme close ups and jump cuts in the sequence creates an unsettling atmosphere, in conjunction with the sharp music in which a few short screams and disturbingly high pitched sounds can be distinctly heard. The editing done by Angus Wall, incorporated techniques such as fading, dissolving and superimposition to add to the abrupt, distorted and almost violent composition of the sequence. Here is the storyboard of the sequence, drawn by Wayne Coe:

The actual titles of the film looked almost hand drawn to reflect the idea of the audience seeing through the killers perspective, and they appear in roughly 4 second long flashes then are quickly wiped off the screen to reinforce the distressing atmosphere. Here are stills of the titles, designed and executed by Kyle Cooper:

The opening sequence for se7en is extremely effective in creating a thrilling atmosphere and mood for the rest of the film, and the techniques used help place a visual emphasis on significant details, which are revealed and explained later on in the movie. As a viewer, I was compelled by the sequence and in creating our two minute opening, my group hopes to use similar techniques to engage our audience. We have also taken away some ideas about how to present our titles more dexterously, to reflect the atmosphere we hope to create.