Psychological thriller opening scenes, Target audience, Ideas

Psychological thriller opening analysis

One of the psychological thriller i decided to watch was ‘se7en’. I chose this films opening sequence as it includes many typical psychological thriller conventions. This film includes different shot types and angles in the beginning sequence of the film, this is very common in psychological thrillers, in these shots it also includes different images which give you hints to look for in the film e.g. the cutting of fingertips. The music used in the sequence creates a scary, dark atmosphere into the scene, this also links to the typical conventions of the sub genre. Occasionally in psychological thrillers they have a first person narrative allowing the viewer to better understand the characters phycological state of mind, “se7en” contrasts this as it only includes the music, throughout the whole opening scene and dosent stop, this may confuse the viewer. 

The second opening i decided to watch was "The Secret Window". From the opening titles you can tell that the main character is a man, who appears to be in his late thirties. He storms into a motel room and finds a man and women in bed together, which the audience presumes to be his wife as whilst steering the car at the beginning of the film the audience can see a gold wedding ring on his finger which suggests that he is married. After that the shot changes to show a remote location where there is a red house in the woods by a lake and as the camera goes into the house the audience notice a laptop on a desk surrounded by books. From this use of mise-en-scene the audience would assume that the main character is an author of some sort. In addition, whilst the main character is in the car at the beginning of the film you can hear someone talking, although the main character's lips are not moving and there is nobody else in the car with him, because of this the audience is lead to believe that the voice we can hear is coming from his mind and are therefore, his thoughts. This suggests that the film may have something to do with his mind. "The Secret Window" is a psychological thriller as psychological thrillers are based on elements that are related to the mind and processes of the mind e.g. the audience hearing his thoughts. The audience can also tell that it is a psychological thriller because of the tension building music in the background and because the title of the film fades from white to red (and red or white titles are quite a generic convention of psychological thrillers). the lighting at the beginning of the opening is quite dark, which suggests that something bad is possibly about to happen as usually in psychological thrillers bad things happen in the dark rather than natural lighting. At the beginning of the film the main character is seen to be wearing all black, which is quite an ominous colour and has of death, perhaps to signify the death of his marriage.

The target audience for the sub genre would be from teenagers to adults. The teenagers ages starting from 15 to adults being aged 60. The sub genre targets this age range because the viewer will have to engage in the film to understand it and pay attention to follow the hints and clues in the story line.

ideas for opening sequence:

Credits-(Cast, Director), dark Lighting (e.g. film noir), Music/Sound/Narrative, Transitions, hints and Clues, Titles.

Zaki Dowd