Story Boards

Character Profiles

Name: Alex
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Character attributes: Long, dark brown hair with middle parting and green eyes. Dresses relatively casually. Has a friendly and fun personality but quite shy. She is easily peer pressured. An average stereotypical teenager.
Role in the film: Best friend of Jess. At the party, she reluctantly takes cocaine under Jess' influence and subsequently dies. She begins to haunt Jess following her death and appears in her dreams and flashbacks.


Name: Jess
Age: 16
Occupation: Student
Character attributes: Long, dark hair with a full fringe and brown eyes. Also dresses relatively casually. Has a rebellious personality and wilfully gets involved in dangerous behaviour such as drugs and drinking.
Role in the film: Best friend of Alex. She convinces Alex to take cocaine which leads to her death. She feels incredibly guilty about her involvement and has night terrors about the night. She begins to see Alex's ghost in her day-to-day life.

Shot List

Questionnaire Results

Prop List

Prop list


Fake drugs (white powder) in a bag

Rum bottle

Phone

Headphones

Credit card

Rolled notes

Mirror

Clothes in a wardrobe

Fake Blood

Risk Assessment

Final Piece Script

The Butterfly Effect Opening Sequence

The film begins with a quote by someone that involves butterflies. It follows to a long shot of a dark office where Evan is breaking in hiding from the police. Moreover the first movie scene starts with hiding and rushing. It dives straight into the plot however we don't know whats happening as the first scene is actually the end of the film and it's telling us what happened to get to that point. They use many mid shots in the beginning when he is alone and a match on action shot when he writing on the piece of paper so the audience know what he's doing. It keeps flipping from Evan to the police back to Evan as he's hiding. An extreme close up is used on the notepad, this tells the viewer that it is an important part of the film.They then use the final words "save her" and graphic match it into butterflies that become to title sequence. The colours used so far are dark, blue, black to create a gloomy atmosphere. The non-diegetic music used first off causes great amounts of tension as it creates a build up and then it changes to a hurried/tense music and matches his actions as he is in a rush. We can hear police man shouting whilst Evan is reading aloud what he is writing in his notepad.

After the title, there is a long shot of a street in broad daylight which is an unusual parallel to what we have just seen. There are people on their bikes and walking this relaxes the audience as it's everyday life. They have used quite a suburban area where there are a lot of houses and families, there is greenery and a well-looked-after area. They used a crane shot to create a steady shot so it isn't handheld and shaky. In this scene, a soft piano music has been used to create a relaxed and calm atmopshere so the audience can feel at ease. We then see it's gone back in time 13 years by the subtitles.

Typical Traits of a Psychological Horrors opening sequence

Typical Traits of a Psychological Horrors opening sequence

psychological horror opening sequences typically try to input the feeling of isolation from the very start and the film, “Shutter Island” provides a key example of this method (http://vimeo.com/23211894) as it starts on a boat in which the lead actor wishes to get off. The theme of isolation is a constant through the film and even the use of the word “Island” in the title suggest this to the audience. Other title sequences will use other methods to give the feeling of isolation; The Shining uses a lone car driving through large vast landscapes to give this feeling.

Another typical trait of this particular genre is to use dull lighting; Shutter Island makes great use of fog to make the opening scene seem like a dream which makes the audience question their own minds. Scorsese uses fog throughout the film to try and achieve this effect of people is scared of what they cannot see.

Darkness is used in many physiological horrors; this allows the audience to create their own fears and is used during the titles in Shutter Island by placing the credits on to blurred backgrounds making the audience wonder what the hidden image behind it is.

Title sequences of the physiological horror genre usually have an undertone of sinister music that is attached to them, the opening scenes of “The Shining” are well known for the low bass notes and high vocal note contrast that creates. Insidious is infamous for the high pitched violins that are played in the opening credits of the film, they can instantly input tension and fear into an audience and combined with the general darkness of the shots it leaves a lot for the audience to fill in. link here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1e1feo4DUk)

Shining Opening Titles Analysis

The shining open titles analysis (http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/the-shining/)

The opening titles of the shining begin flying over a lake and doing high angle shots of wide open country side, this is done to provoke a sense of isolation before the film even begins, and is a good way to establish the surroundings the film will be set. The shot below of the car driving on its own does this very well and is something we will try to put into our own film to convey a sense of loneliness.

The shots of the car driving down a baron road continue while sinister brass music is played over the top attempting to make the audience fell uneasy and confused as to why this is happening, as well as this high notes are played at offbeat intervals with a distortion effect implying something is not right.

The music then escalates into a choir that sounds like it is almost screaming and at this time the films main title is shown at the climax of the sequence.

The only other time another car is shown in shot thus far is after the climax and this is used to attempt to give the audience a sense of security as the opening titles begin to calm down. Seconds later 2 more cars are shown.  One of the final shots in the scene is of a grey scale lodge type building surrounded by snow and once again isolated from the outside world.