Planning: Treatment

The car from the new family is seen driving up the road, happy music playing in the back, two neighbours outside there own house, standing on the pavements looking to the right of the road. The music is playing and credits are fade in and out (white text) all over the screen. The music (Tom's creation), at each beat of the music a photo will flash up, the photos will be of a family portrait slowly burning. The photos will start to show up as soon as the family car gets to the drive, then the photo will flash out after a matter of seconds. We are then shown a clip of the subject washing their hands, once they have turned the tap off, the photo flashes up again only this time there is less of the photo (due to burning) then it will flash back to the car driving again for a few seconds, this switching continues throughout the opening while the subject is walking across the landing, we are then shown the subjects feet and them beginning to walk down the stairs, The picture flashes up again when the subject looks through the window then this goes back to the car shot pulling into the drive. The next shot is the subjects hand pulling back the curtain, you are only able to hear the family walking up to the door but you cannot see them, then you see the door being unlocked and the curtain being drawn back, the final image is then shown and the image is almost gone, this then fades to black as you hear the sound of the door opening.

Planning: Finalising Ideas

For our final opening we have decided to mix a few our ideas.

The car from the new family is seen driving up the road, happy music playing in the back, two neighbours outside there own house, standing on the pavements looking to the right of the road. The music is playing and credits are fade in and out (white text) all over the screen. The music (Tom's creation), at each beat of the music a photo will flash up, the photos will be of a family portrait slowly buring. The photos will start to show up as soon as the family car gets to the

Photo Idea:

Photo of the family that we are using, burning, however the photo that will show will stay the same throughout the film opening.

Final Scene Shot:

Interior of house, behind the curtain covering the front door, film the hand slowly drawing back the curtain, seeing the people outside walking up to the door, unlocking and pulling the handle down, then as the door handle is moving the hand is filmed again closing back the curtain. After this the final burning photograph is shown at its last stage, fully disintegrated.

First Scene: washing hands

Film someone washing and drying their hands (camera from their point of view looking down at hands), camera is shown as the person walking across the landing, pulling the blind cords and looking through. Walking down the stairs (camera showing the actors feet stepping). Gets to another stair window- looks through the window (watching the family stepping out the car and walking up to the house). standing in front of front door curtain, the camera films the character slowly drawing back the curtain and watching as the family reach the front door, enter key and use handle, just as the key turns the character closes the curtain. After this the final burning photograph is shown at its last stage, fully disintegrated.

"Art of the Title"

Here I analysed the opening to "Six Feet Under" which is a T.V series, I chose this because I was familiar with many horror film openings and wanted to find out different ways you can convey horror, for example in this opening images and sound are used in a way so you know briefly of the plot, and despite this typically being classed as more of a crime/thriller show, I feel that the techniques used would be effective if used for a horror film

Planning: Target audience feedback regarding possible openings

I have created a survey to find out which one of our openings our audience will find better, this survey can be accessed by clicking here

Planning: Opening possibilities

We have thought of possible openings for our main task;

1) Simplistic idea. A range of burning family photos mixed with some disturbing images in sepia/black and white, the camera will be scanning across them. There will possibly be flash shots of the car driving to an abandoned shot. The music we intend to use for this will either be ironic- similar to the theme tune for "Dexter" (Something quite uplifting to make the film even more 'deceiving') or an eerie scratchy sounding track that stays in with the whole theme 

2) A first person opening. A Member of the family filming the moment they arrive at their new house, The sound in this piece will all be diegetic

3) One full shot of the house and the road, you gradually begin to see the car driving up and then parking in the driveway, from this the camera pans to the right, revealing the neighbors staring at the new family. The title pops up and edgy music starts to play

4) Various clips of hands, sharpening spears (carving wood) cutting meat to look like limbs (using fake blood in this scene) washing hands, fire, also more images flashing in a darkened room, possibly images of broken windows and other household objects (Similar to the trailer of Se7en)

Planning: Target Audience Feedback

I posted our synopsis to Survey Monkey but I only managed to receive 2 responses, because of this we decided to take a new route and focus more on films which we knew were successful horrors and take a look at their openings. From these openings we watched we managed to gain a good knowledge of what makes a good horror film opening, we plan on sharing our ideas with our target audience and hoping for a better response