Captured- Final Finished Opening Sequence

Research on 'Why people love the 'Horror Genre'

Why Do People Love Horror Movies? They Enjoy Being Scared

ScienceDaily (July 31, 2007) — A bedrock assumption in theories that explain and predict human behavior is people's motivation to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. How can this be reconciled with the decision to engage in experiences known to elicit negative feelings, such as horror movies" It certainly seems counterintuitive that so many people would voluntarily immerse themselves in almost two hours of fear, disgust and terror.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070725152040.htm

This piece of research is from a scientific website and shows the mental and psychological reasons for people liking horror  movies.

I believe it's because it's a way of escaping from real life into a temporary, fantasy world where horrific and terrible things happen to normal people like you and me, with otherworldly sites and sounds we would not be experiencing in our everday life.


We know that what we are seeing is "not real", that we are in a "safe zone", yet we can experience the feeling of knowing what it might be like if these things we see and hear could actually happen to us...this is our imagination at work


It's normal human behavior to seek "thrills", and these things projected on a screen are emotionally "thrilling" and yet physically harmless.
Summed up in one word: ESCAPISM

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060808201355AA3SoXM

This research is from a website called Yahoo which is a place where people ask questions and anyone can put their own opinion, so this is from a person's own point of view about why people like horror movies.




The reason I chose to do this research is so we can look at the reasons people love the genre and make sure that when we watch our movie over we feel those same feelings inside.

Production Logo Research

Whilst researching production logos to get ideas for our own, I came accross this image which shows a variety of production logos around at the moment. As you can see there are a variety of different colours and images used on each, but as our opening is based on the genre of horror, we are looking more at the darker logos to add to the whole atmosphere of the film. I felt that if we used a brightly coloured production logo, it would take away from the whole effect that we are trying to get across to the audience.

We based our logo on mostly the darker examples above as we felt it was most appropriate for our opening. As you can see from the examples our uses elements from both MIRAMAX Films and Twisted Pictures.

Own initial idea submitted to group for consideration

When we were given our groups we were told to go off individually and create our own story boards so we would have four to choose from to create our final idea. My idea was based around the genre of horror (which we then used in our real opening). It was about a man who went to a grave yard and killed someone and ran away and we saw blood drip from his hands and heard his heavy breathing as he went home and had to explain himself to his family. It contained lots of quick straight cut shots to create tension and effectiveness (which we also used in our final opening). We took a small part of everyone's idea to create our final opening which was really helpful as it made thinking of our actual idea much easier.

Se7en Opening Sequence

  


At the beginning of the opening there are shots which help us to establish what might be happening in the film and also help us to understand the genre. We can tell that it might be something to do with crime and horror as there is a pan shot of finger prints which tell the audience that there has been some sort of crime committed. The dark dull colours used also create a sense of horror and dark mysterious happenings. There is a creepy effect created with the fast forwarding used and slow motion.  


The credits are shown over the images. Morgan Freemans' name is shown on a black background, which is cleverly used to make sure the audience's full attention is on his name. He is a very famous actor so the audience will therefore want to see his performance in this film and want to watch it more. The main title of the film is shown half way through the opening which is unusual as most titles are shown at the end of an opening. This could show how the film is different to other films which will intrigue the viewer into watching it. 


The sound used in the opening is all non-diegetic. It is quite morbid and scary music that builds up throughout the opening. There is a drum beat throughout the opening that reminds me of a heart beat.   
This could relate to how there is going to be death in the film. There are lyrics at the end of the opening in the song that say "you bring me closer to god" and at the same time as this the sound of the heart beat stops. The reference to god could link to death and so could the beat stopping. 


There is a constant use of changing from positive images to negative. This could relate to how there might be different sides to the film. It may have the horror side but there my be an opposite to this as well.