Film Openings - Thomas Sutcliffe

This media lesson we were learning about thriller openings, and what sort of features/edits make them effective. During the lesson we watched a DVD of film openings by Thomas Sutcliffe which explained what type of features that are needed to be incorporated into a thriller opening sequence in order for it to be as effective as possible. the DVD shows all the techniques needed to make the opening be true to its genre, some of these features were things such as creating suspense through leaving things to the viewers imagination so that their agony of waiting to see what comes next is prolonged as much as possible, this is so they are prepared to sit their throughout the duration of the film.

The other effects that I found very effective to use when creating the opening to a thriller is to try and leave as much detail as possible to the viewers imagination, so that they are sitting their thinking of what comes next, a way of doing for example could be to show a knife sitting on a table and then show another shot of somebody who mite have reason to use the knife. this will get the audience thinking of teh possible outcomes from the scenario.

Another useful effect is to try and avoid showing the faces of vital characters that play a key part in the thriller, this will help to create suspense and have the viewers adrenailine rushing as they are frustratated by the suspense of finding out who played the victim/criminal part etc.

Some effects that are not as attractive when creating a thriller is 'Instant Arousel', which is when the film immediately shows its best attribute of teh thriller instantly at the beginning of the film. this technique is something that should be avoided because often when this is used the film is then left with no sense of direction and the audience becomes pre-occupied doing other things instead of having their eyes fixsated on the film. this may lead to the film being unsuccessful.