In our opening credits, the main character featured was the antagonist, whose face was not revealed but instead their character was shown by many closeup shots of their hands and mise-en-scene. This is part of a trope used in the opening credits of Se7en.
The character belongs to a group of antagonists which represent intelligent villains. In order to convey that, in one of our final shots we briefly reveal their past occupation to be a surgeon, in reference to Nazi official Mengele as well as serial killer Harold Shipman. Both of these murderers fall under the serial killer sub category dubbed ‘Angel of Death’. We also hint this through the surgeries that our character performs on the teddies.
In order to divert from the purely cold and clever antagonist, we decided to give it an air of childishness which would add to the creepiness of the credits. In order to achieve this we selected a soundtrack that was light, but presented a dark tone as well.
To add onto that we also chose a font for the credits called Two Turtle Doves, which looks like a child’s handwriting. They are also presented in a pink to present the infant side to our character. The colour itself has been muted down because we wanted it to reflect a kind of old tape style.
Furthermore, we selected mise-en-scene like teddy bears to reflect more of the child-like nature the character has. In order to creepy-fy it we used glitchy jump-cuts, a trope commonly used in credits from shows like ‘True Blood’ and ‘American Horror Story’ .
We aimed to create an air of enigma with our opening credits akin to ones like ‘Se7en’, which create more questions the more is revealed.
Close-up of highlighting from Se7en. This shows the attention to detail the killer has, a common trope in thrillers based on police investigations.
An anomaly we used was the kitten, which was used to represent innocence alongside witchcraft which are starkly contrasting ideas but both interlink with the antagonist being childish as well as messed up.
Closeup of mise-en-scene, a common trope in mystery movies. As it reveals the lifestyle of the killer it still raises more questions than it answers, as there is more detail shown but no bigger picture.
Closeup of teddy’s face as it is investigated, which is a reference to a short film called ‘Teddy has a surgery’. The closeness creates an air of discomfort for the audience as well as suspense. What is she searching for? What will happen?
Another trope we followed was creating discomfort in a safe space. Doctors require a great amount of trust from patients, but we attempt to make the audience doubt their trust with closeups on surgical tools which reinforce discomfort and shake the audience’s feeling of safety.
In many movies, people are upset with the idea of animals in the movies ‘dying’, which is a common feature of typical horror movies like ‘Insidious’. A small snippit of the cat being approached by a dark silhouette is foreboding and alarms the audience as potential danger to an innocent pet is presented.
Lighting of the candle with a shrine of photos behind shows that the character worships/ looks up to another person. It is a hint to their inspiration and motives in their work, which may be due to the death of someone (Mengele in the photos) and
In reference to Black Swan, we used extreme closeups of oil pastel sketching to represent the childishness the character possesses, and also the messiness which contrasts the control and tidiness a doctor should have.
The cutting up of something cute and innocent like a toy rabbit has a more sinister meaning and gets the point across without using any gore
In our shot we did not include gloves which makes the sewing seem unprofessional. The comparison shot is from ‘Teddy has an Operation’.
Burning of childhood photos in reference to American Horror Story. This represents the character’s potentially broken childhood and gives them a freudian excuse for behaviour characteristics. Childhood trauma is also shown through their care for the cat, who is treated like a baby suggesting that the main character shown in the credits has issues surrounding their early years.
Inspired by Mengele, who is a figure of interest to the main character, thus they follow his footsteps in (what is suggested to be) human experimentation.
No comments:
Post a Comment