So, just as Halloween was a horror movie released around when our movie will take place, Nightmare on Elm Street was also released around the 1980’s. November 9th, 1984 to be precise. So, today I am going to analyze its opening to see what I might use in my movie opening.
Nightmare on Elm Street Opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn_DjzN8410
After watching through the clip, I don’t think it is going to do all that much for our opening. While it did a good job of establishing its villain, and gave hints at the rules in the world of the movie, it didn’t do much that I think would fit in our movie. First of all, it showed the monster, which we aren’t planning on doing. Secondly, it is set, for the most part, in some sort of industrial building,while our opening is going to be in a forest area, so we can’t get much in terms of lighting or background. However it did give me idea that I’m going to call the bait and switch. At two separate points in the movie, the character hears movement as the score builds, but the movement is then revealed to be something harmless like an animal, and the score cuts out. Then, when you think its over, the monster pops in and the score abruptly starts really loud as a form of jump scare. Now if we did this we would only do it once. Two seems to be pushing it, as once you do the trick once the audience begins to suspect something next time it happens. We would also have to change it around a bit, because we aren’t showing the monster it wouldn’t be able to jump out. Instead, I think we could have it do something to the character, like rip them backwards or something. That way the affect of the bait and switch is still there, without tipping our hand on what is killing these people.
Update: Upon looking more into the clip, it could actually be very useful. While I was reviewing the opening again, I realized that it has the same style/format our opening is gonna have. While its setting and use of the killer itself are things I can’t take note of, the mini narrative within the opening itself is very similar to our general idea I talked about earlier. Starting off slow, having our character begin to panic as noises and what not plague the surrounding area, and then they run until the monster later catches them. The pacing of this opening can serve as a guideline of how to pace our own opening to help us build more suspense. The cuts grow more and more frequent as the scene goes on, helping build tension with the rising temp of the movie. We could do something similar in our movie to mimic the pacing this movie has to make our opening more tense/suspenseful. While reviewing this, I thought about how we couldn’t use a lot of the clip due to its setting, such as lighting, background, ambience, etc. However this made me think of Friday the 13th, which is another horror movie from around the time period that takes place in a forest, just like our opening. That will probably be my next opening to research, so stay tuned for that. Overall, this opening, while being of minor use with lighting, setting, background, ambience, etc., is going to be very useful in the A.) pacing of our opening, and B.) possible use of the bait and switch technique.
Film Project 