Carl Jung--The Red Book

The idea for our thriller title sequence was inspired by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychotherapist and psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology.

In 1913, at the age of 38, Jung experienced a horrible "confrontation with the unconscious". He saw visions and heard voices. He worried at times that he was "menaced by a psychosis" or was "doing a schizophrenia." He decided that it was valuable experience, and in private, he induced hallucinations, or, in his words, "active imaginations." He recorded everything he felt in small journals. Jung began to transcribe his notes into a large, red leather-bound book,therefore known as the 'Red Book', on which he worked intermittently for sixteen years. .

My group and I though it was really interesting and decided we would like to incorporate it into our title sequence. We thought it would be a good idea for a thriller as it is more psychological and different compared to a typical thriller.

American Horror Story

American Horror Story is a thriller series. I think the opening titles of this series are a very good example of a thriller opening sequence:




















It creates tension as images flash in and out, this makes the audience want to know what the image is and intrigues them. The music is weird and different to having strings as it sounds electrical, and it crescendo's when the titles appear, making the audience jump. Fast-paced editing is used throughout, creating anticipation and anxiety. Panning is used in some shots tp show the audience what the image is and to capture the full image. When the text appears, in flashes in and out, a sudden movement. It is white text against a black background. This is effective because of the contrast it produces.The text used is gothic and creepy to match the tone of the series.

This title sequence may be a good example to follow as a media student as it has many different techniques to try out and experiment with.

Mise en scene

Mise en scene is the French term which means 'what is put into the scene or frame'. This includes:

• settings and props
• costume, hair and make-up
• facial expressions and body language
• lighting and colour
• positioning of characters and objects within a frame

These are important as they tell the audience when the film is set, what the tone of the film is, what is happening in a scene and things about the characters personalities.

In my production, I will think about all these aspects when filming, as it is important to consider and tell the audience what is happening or what my narrative is through mise en scene.

Sound

There are many different sounds used in the media world, here are some examples:

Diegetic and Nondiegetic sound:

Diegetic sound: Sound that is part of the film world we are watching. This includes dialogue, music or sound effects which come from a source within the film world. The music in this instance will be from a source in the film which we acknowledge could producing music, for example a CD player or jukebox.

Diegetic sound can occur either on screen or off screen; in other words we either see the person or object that is making the sound (on screen) or we don't (off sreen)

Nondiegetic sound: Sound which we do not recognise as part of the film world such as a voice-over or background music.

 

Sound Bridges:

This where the music continues through transitions of shots on the screen to make the cut from one scene to the next a smooth transition. A film would seem very disjointed if the music changes everytime the visual image changed, so that is why a sound bridge is used in film.

Parallel and Contrapuntal sound:

When we watch a film, the sound we hear usually complements the image that we see on screen. For instance, if we are looking at children playing on a beach, we expect to hear happy voices and light-hearted music. This is known as parallel sound. However, when we are watching these happy scenes on the beach but hear the sinister 'dur dur' theme which signals the arrival of the chark, as in the film 'Jaws', this is kniwn as contrapuntal sound because it does not match the image we see on screen.





Im our production, we must consider sound. Our soundtrack is very important for getting the feel of a thriller we are trying to convey to the audience. We are going to have a soundtrack all the way through our title sequence to make smooth transitions into each image and not disjointed.

Target Audience

The audience our project we most likely appeal to is 15+, as it would be to much for a younger audience. Our project compares to films such as Paranormal Activity and Insidious which are both 15+ due to its mature content, such as psychological threat which a teenage and older audience will appreciate and understand more. Also, a younger audience would probably take it too seriously and become scared.

Things to improve

We showed our teacher our thriller title sequence so far, and there were some things we need to improve on and changes we need to make:

• Such as more dramatic shots, including distortion and amplified images to convey the tension we want to create and make the audience feel
• Instead of text, we are to use hand-written writing on a whiteboard, in a neat, gothic hand-writing. When we add this to our project, we will add effects over the top, such as a red tint to make it more interesting and to create suspense
• Also, we are short of our time limit, so we need to get more footage to add, which we can do in our own time with our own cameras

These things will hopefully improve our project and bring the grade it's worth at the moment up.

Vertigo TS

Vertigo is an Alfred Hitchcock movie, of which I watched the opening title sequence to:

• Uses CUs of woman's face
• Panning up her face, moving from her lips, to nose, to her eyes and then finally to one of her eyes
• Music is mostly strings, crescendo when text appears, build tension
• Text flies in and fades out, makes a smooth transition between each text
• Text is outlined in white, and is gothic style
• After half a minute, the image changes into a red tint and the text flies in again, but this time out of her eye and flies out, getting bigger
• After this sort of introduction, the text and images change to a black background with bright shapes with white text
• The text changes to block white and it quite gothic and old-fashioned
• Towards end of title sequence, goes back to womans eye and the shape fades into her eye instead of fading out of it

I think this is a good example of a thriller title sequence as it creates and builds tension throughout the whole sequence. The different images and the editing included in the Vertigo title sequence are inspirational and good ideas to try and experiment with in our media project.