To create a successful thriller opening you must consider the genre's conventions and techniques and include them as creatively as possible. Here is my list of elements I believe we need to craft and execute into our opening to make it effective as possible:
Create suspense through behaviour of figure, sound and camera.
• The killer character's behaviour of figure should be extremely quirky and abnormal in his movements. His walk should be jerky and unnatural by twitching his arms and his feet facing inwards.
• The score should be crafted to relate to what is shown on screen. e.g. When a sudden shot of the killer is shown, high pitched strings could be played to unnerve audiences. Also the atmosphere of the score should be present throughout, avoiding long period of silence. Atmospheric sounds could include wind or even low pitch bass. A successfully placed score can really drag an audience in and keep their attention.
• Cinematography can also create suspense in relation to hiding our murderer's full face. I feel it is important to keep some secrecy in a killer to add more tension and build up to the full appearance. This also keeps audiences wanting to watch for longer as the mystery behind the killer is captivating and engrossing for viewers. This would be done by only filming from behind the character when filming in either a long shot, mid shot or a master shot to not expose the face of the killer. Our killer have strange, grotesque make-up which we want to expose to the viewer but not show his full face from the front. So extreme close-ups will be used to show these features off.
• Also through cinematography we want to establish our setting. This will be achieved with a couple of short establishing shots. Also long shots and master shots will expose the setting to audiences. We have two locations for setting, one with the boys and another with the killers. We are going to expose the victims setting but are not going to show our killers setting so clearly. This will unnerve audiences as they do not know the exact whereabouts of the murderers location.
• Be simple, but not too simple. With so many AS thriller projects, I have seen many that do not have a great deal going on. It is important to learn that three minutes of film can create a lot of different feelings and circumstances. We did not want to overdo it but we feel that with two contrasting characters in a variety of shots and angles, along with different actions of the character on screen, we have enough to keep an audience entertained.