Finding Actors...
In general, this will hopefully be the easiest part of preparation for our opening sequence. We only have two characters; The woman walking to her car and the dead body. The woman we decided is a young professional on her way home from work in the evening. Therefore finding an actress is going to cause some issue. Currently all we have to work with are the teachers, which could work if one is able to miss a whole day of lessons for our shoot.
Right now our choices are Fran Lee and Katie Banham for the woman and Adam Grant for the dead body
The dead body is more difficult in a way. Because this idea for a film wasn't perfectly thought out, We have no idea why the dead body is there to begin with! Is it an elderly man with a dark past who has been killed or is it a young boy who knows something he shouldn't have? If we can't think of an answer, it would be easiest to use our teacher Adam, as he will be on set anyway.
One of the endings to our opening sequence shows a dead body. None of us are particularly good at make-up so naturally trying to put make up on someone to show that they are dead is going to be quite difficult. So what we did is we looked on YouTube for make-up tutorials and we found this one. This video shows how we can make a slit in someones throat and with other make up we also have to show that he has been dead for a while. We found this other video to show how to make it look like someone has been dead for a while as you can see we need to make the person look pale and with blood shot eyes.
Location Research...
Having set out our first basic storyboard, I wanted to find an actual site that we could possibly shoot at. Looking at our local town Guildford, I came across Leapale Road Car Park, which fits the image in my head fairly well.
The tiered car park is large enough from a first glance and could be a perfect site to shoot in if we can gain permission from the owners. However timing may be an issue. Good natural lighting could be used in the late afternoon to create a dark, hard light. However if we film in January time, light changes very quickly, meaning filming the whole sequence in one day may be a challenge.
The lighting may not look perfect also. Ideally, the car park would have harsh artificial lighting,
and the inside of the car park would have a green tone like in the photo below. However this look is probably impossible with the red brick walls.
Finally having a set be a private place causes issues. How will we maintain continuity when people come and go from the carpark? Will the carpark be busy and will that fit with the tone we are trying to create.
The opening scene to this episode of Black Mirror is some of my inspiration for the colour scheme and style I would like to have
Difficulties with Test Shooting...
Unfortunately, as a group a test shoot was impossible. There is no way we will know what we will truly film on the day. The issue is, we have no way of visiting our location, and floor plans aren't easily available online. Therefore we can't know what shots we will be able to get, Hopefully I will be able to improvise on the day and work around the area of space I get given.
Further Story-boarding...
Having discussed the previous idea of the crazed painter further, we decided as a group that as good as we could have made it, the sequence would have been boring to film and very difficult to get perfect. Instead we came up with the idea of a woman walking to her car from a supermarket in the late afternoon, but something isn't quite right. No one is around and it seems as if she's being watched and followed. She notices this and speeds up her walk into the car park where a door slams, making her even more uneasy. Having placed her shopping in the boot, she finally gets in her car. However when she looks to her left the car next to her has a dead body in it/ blood on the window.
Not only would this story be more interesting to film, as it uses a wider range of shots, It also has more potential to show off a multitude of camera skills and editing techniques to build up the tension necessary for the final twist. This idea will most likely be the one we stick with. It's realistically doable, we have people who can play the parts and we have a car park that we can use. However our current dilemma involves the ending of the sequence. We have two options; the original, in which she looks over to the car to the right and sees a body, followed by a cut to black or the new idea, in which she goes to inspect blood on the window to then find the body.
Storyboarding Thriller Ideas...
Having looked over my original ideas, and then been put into groups, today I began to storyboard and visually create some recreation of the visuals I have in my head. The first thriller idea we chose as a group to draw was my idea of a psycho painter. Generally I am quite happy with some of the shots we came out with, although I think I'm going to re-draw a few so that the close ups are more extreme: I want the opening sequence to look more interesting and give less away. The first draft of the opening sequence is below:
However as we drew through each shot, we figured out as a group some of the floors to making this sequence: Who will actually paint a reasonable looking rose for our video? What sort of painting is it - Life like or abstract? How will we film the short most effectively without making any continuity errors along the way? All in all I think its definitely worth going back to the drawing board to try out a few other ideas so not to limit myself and make things harder than they need to be.
Analysis of Cooper's American Horror Story Opening Sequences
I personally have never been a huge fan of the
American Horror Story series, however I must admit that I have always found their intros incredible, without the knowledge that they were done by Kyle Cooper. Each season has a different intro hinting at some of the things which will show up throughout and all of them are with the same soundtrack. Each intro is incredibly unique, some done with animations and others with some fantastic sets. All of them follow Coopers style, very choppy with a lot of closeups to disorientate and confuse the audience and keep them trying to figure out whats on screen. Every opening sequence so far has been equally disturbing and hard to watch as the last, which I'm sure was Cooper's intention to begin with.
One piece of Cooper's work that caught my eye was his involvement in the title sequence for Dawn of the Dead. The sequence begins by cutting between black screen and short shots of chaos. During the black screen we hear a press conference about a virus, which we can easily connect to the scenes of zombies. The use of red text running off screen like blood instantly sets the genre of a slasher horror, and if this wasn't already obvious enough the sounds of heartbeats and screaming hit the nail in the coffin. I really like Coopers choice of soundtrack; Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around. It not only adds to the chaos of the following scenes, but it casually gives the audience that the virus is deadly. This soundtrack matched with the 'channel flipping' on the TV, create a sense of realism and relatability. All in all the opening sequence did exactly what it was meant to. It layed out the situation, the tone, the genre, all while maintaining the interest of the audience with impressive visuals of riots and chaos.
Kyle Cooper is a director and designer of film title sequences from Massachusetts. Born in 1962, Kyle grew up to go to Yale University to study graphic design. Over his lifetime he's worked on over 150 film titles from Flubber in 1997 to Tropic Thunder in 2008. Throughout this time he has also founded creative agencies such as Imaginary Forces and Prologue Films, which are recognised internationally.
His most notorious work includes the Marvel 'Flipbook' introduction which is now used in almost every Marvel superhero film and the opening sequence to the critically acclaimed TV series 'Band of Brothers'.
