The first influential film opening is the Blair Witch Project. The inspiration from this title sequence is the camera movement, mise-en-scene and the credits. From the very beginning they have established that the style of filming is as a documentary as the movement from the camera is very shaky making it obvious it is hand held and the angles are all POV, you can also hear the camera man talking from behind the camera to give context. This follows the codes and conventions of a documentary film so the audience know that the camera movement and angles are not going to be perfect therefore are not disappointed. The mise-en-scene is also influential to our opening sequence as it denotes everyday life, the characters are wearing 'normal' clothing; jeans, coats, t-shirts etc. They are in what is perceived to be the main characters house as she then goes on to tell the audience what she is doing and that it is her idea to go on this trip. They then film outside of her house as another character is introduced, the season chosen to film in looks like Autumn, due to the colour of the leaves and the characters clothing, which is often associated with Halloween connoting horror. Which could then be foreshadowing that something supernatural will happen later on in the film. Although there is not much of the title credits and they only include the production/distribution icon, the film title and some context the lay out of them is intriguing and goes well with the genre, horror. The method used is very simplistic with white text against a still black background yet it is effective as the text looks as if it is being filmed on a super 8 camera, which are often associated with horror films so it creates that eerie tone for the title sequence. The reason these are influential to our film is that we are filming in the style of a documentary therefore we need to create realism in our film and to do that we will be using similar camera movements and angles such as the Blair Witch, the mise-en-scene also helps to create the realism we wish to achieve in our opening sequence and the way the credits have been stylised is appealing to the eye and flows nicely with the genre. But when we do our title sequence we will be including more credits following a more traditional method.
The second film which helped gather inspiration was Grave Encounters. The pilot clip they play in the beginning of the film about the main character's profession gave us some inspiration on sound. Most horror films shot in the documentary style do not include background music just dialogue from the characters, this is because they want to create realism and real life doesn't have music playing in the background like they do in films. Mostly this works as the silence in the background helps create the build up of fear and tension for the audiences as they do not know how to react or feel without sound in a film, because they are used to seeing films with background music connoting how they should feel about what is happening onscreen. However in our opening title sequence we will be using sound as it can strongly coincide with the footage and make our title sequence better as we have limited recourses to produce our title sequence. The sound used in the main characters short clip is very sinister and eerie, giving off a spooky tone when the music dramatically changes as the images onscreen start to show supernatural beings. This short clip with sound is influential as the image and sound are synchronous which is what we hope to achieve when editing and it adds elements of fear and mystery to the audience which the footage alone could not do. The editing is also influential as it consists of short match cuts which creates a seamless effect and the audience can concentrate on following the action as it occurs rather than becoming distracted with irrelevant background movement.
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