Synopsis

In the opening of our film will begin in a wood, with the main character walking through with a rather nervous sense to them, you soon get the idea of them being followed, before an ellipsis shows them dead on the floor, between this some of the credits are shown. Then, it flashes back to two days earlier, when she is just another girl in College, she ends up in lesson with a friend, texting under the desk, then she gets a funny text saying to 'look in her bag', she does and she finds the corpse of an animal within there, the starting sequence ends with that.

Genre Research Summary

After having researched my genre - Psychological Horror - I have been able to summarise what I have found out from my close analysis.
The titles very often are simply, a black background with white, plain writing, to give it more of a formal feel almost, very often Psychological Horrors are portrayed as reality, to add to the fear factor, many people believed The Blair Witch Project was genuine, and the Paranormal Activity films are also filmed much like a documentary, it is often shown as a slow pace, with an amateurish feel to it. The pace is slow and it usually tells us little other than the title of the film and the production companies (the amateur feel is often better if a less well known company is used).
The music is one of the most key parts in horrors itself, and especially so in psychological horrors, in Paranormal Activity, you can often tell when something is going to happen as a light bass can very slowly be felt being built up, which builds up with tension. However, in The Blair Witch Project, there is much less non-diegetic sounds all together, as it is supposed to be a documentary from a camera, so adding music would remove that feel of it. In my film, I will look at using music for the starting sequence, because it is hugely important within the genre.
Very often, the main characters are portrayed in the opening credits, and something I noticed is that very often there is a relationship within horror films itself, and even more so in my sub-genre, it is often to show the destruction of their relationship from whatever horror comes, or, it could be a beacon of hope, but that is a much rarer occurrence, as horror is meant to scare and terrify it's audience, and if whatever they're against can destroy their relationship, and leave them alone and vulnerable, what can't it do?
Generally, the mise-en-scene is set within a fairly normal place, nowhere completely out of this world(literately or not). For example, Paranormal Activity is set within a normal persons house after they begin to believe they are being haunted. I have found no generic thoughts on the costume, other than they are often fairly normal people within these films. At the start, when everything is fine (Which is usually begins at with not just my sub-genre, but with most horrors) the lighting is usually normal, and if anything a little bright, it's not until a little way into the film when the lighting all begins to change.
There is just about always use of enigma codes, it makes us ask questions, we want to know what happened, why, what is going on? In Paranormal Activity, you instantly begin to ask these questions as the strange occurrences begin to happen, you want to know what the demon wants, and what is it going to do? Just as with The Blair Witch Project, you want to know what's after them, and at the start, what's so special about this footage, why did they disappear? It doesn't tell you this, it only gives you enough detail to get your mind going.
Within psychological horrors, there is a large contrast, in some of the films there may be very quick paced, different camera angles and much editing and cinematography, however, in others, there may be no editing whatsoever, especially if its done from an amateur point of view, so you can go in either directions, I think we are going to be going in the direction of the quick paced version which goes more into the story and less about the fear coming from the fact you are unable to see anything but what the camera sees, you can't even see everything the characters can.

Target Audience

Our target audience will involve the age of 15-19 years old, as it is often a more youthful audience which will watch horrors, also, the actors will be of that age, so they can relate to the character, if we cast an older audience, it may have been best to try and involve an older audience. We will have both male and female, however, females will be targeted slightly more so, as they could relate to the main character, who is a female. We would go for a mainstream audience, as other audiences, such as rebels, aren't so much into horror films, which are very popular in today's culture, especially by the mainstream audience, which takes up most of the market. We would also include in the social classes of C1, C2 and D this is the audience that would most go to the cinema on regular occasions, the B and A classes may prefer somewhere a little more high class, also, C1, C2 and D has the most amount of people in the mainstream class, so forth, the most people who would wish to watch a horror, also the cinema attracts more of the typical, working and middle class members of society.

Film Openings - Genre Specific Analysis

'The Blair Witch Project' Opening Scene

The first opening I have chosen to analyse is the Blair Witch Project, a very renown film, many people even thought it was real, which was the basis of it, it was meant to seem completely real and authentic. It is a very short opening, which begins with 'Artisan Entertainment', not a very well known production company, and to add to the 'do it yourself' feel, it has a slightly shaky look to it, the lettering is shaking a little, as if it were done by a hand held camera or done on an old film projector, it gives us the impression that it really was a group of students that did this, and it is funded by a small company, as it'd be rare for someone such as 21st Century Fox to back a group of students. This is backed up by the next part of the opening sequence, the Haxan Films is not a very well known company either, and yet again, the simplicity of it and the shaking suggests it was made by students, not a professional company that knows what it's doing.
Once the title and 'explanation' of what was going on appeared, it was in very formal writing, a simple yet formal font and in full English Language, with only words needed to inform us. It is very much like a documentary, yet it still has that amateurish feel to it, due to the shaky nature of the words. After this, it goes straight into the film footage, so there is little else to tell, but it shows how they're going for the authentic feel, they don't tell us who the actors are, they don't tell us any costume designers, or even if there was a director, it just goes straight in, which really adds to the horror of the film (shown by many people believing it truly was real).
'The Omen' Opening Scene
Straight away, you know that The Omen is made by a higher class of Producers, the 21st Century Fox logo appears on the screen straight away, whilst in comparison to the new version of it it looks fairly dated, back then, it would have seemed new and the audience would instantly get connotations of a film with a larger budget and so forth it could quite possibly have more special effects. In similar text to 'The Blair Witch Project's, the producers names are shown afterwards, which is 'Twentieth Century-Fox' and 'Harvery Bernhard-Mace Neufeld', the second of which was not so well known, especially not back then, but it had a much more professional feel to it, the letters were perfectly still, you could tell it was professional just from that one, subtle difference. Next, the name 'Gregory Peck' is shown in large, bold lettering, Gregory Peck was one of 20th Century Fox's favourite actors between the 40s and 60s, so his name meant something, even in 1976 when this film was released, it backed up the feel that this was a large production, that such a big name was backing it. They seemed to almost be going out of the way to show off this, possibly to attract a large mainstream audience by showing off all the mainstream production companies and actors they had involved, they next showed Lee Remick, also a well known actress of her time.

Afterwards, the titles 'The Omen' appeared, with background music which already began bringing suspense to the film, it began with just music, but then a 'choir' joined in, to back up the heavy beats of the non-diegetic sounds. Also, to the right, it shows the shadowed figure of a young boy, with a crimson light behind him, and his shadow made a cross, giving connotations of religion., the dark mist behind him gave a very dark feel to it, it wasn't thought of as a good, peaceful sign, or a sign of god, it seems very sinister, the shadow is very large, almost intruding out of the screen and at you. It then goes on to name the Directors, who wrote the music, and other such titles, the Director is last, to show his importance, the music climaxes then quietens down just as the credits end and the first scene starts, the last part of the credits is showing us the place and the date, just to set the scene, this is just a way to establish the scene, not particularly part of the credits, although it keeps that simplistic, white, plain feel to the text.

Genre Moodboard

A moodboard is poster of types which contains images, texts and samples of objects which show a concept of design and to communicate ideas with other people in a rather simplistic way. It would be good to show a target audience to see their opinion upon it. They are often used by graphical designers to give the idea of the genre of what they're doing, in my example, it's about a Psychotic Horror, but it could be about anything, a music video or even a book.