The reason I am choosing to analyze the opening to Friday the 13th is because 1) the movie takes place in a camp in the woods, and our movie takes place in the woods, 2) it is a horror movie like our movie, 3) it was released in 1980, around when our movie is to be set, and 4) because it is a well known and successful horror movie, so it had to do something right.
Friday the 13th Opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uwz6CTT4aY
Okay to start us off, the good. The opening consists mostly of a POV shot from the killer. This, as discussed in previous posts, is an idea that I think could work in our film. In this example, the killer targets someone specifically, so we could use that in our movie. Maybe start showing a group together to sort of explain why the victim is there, then have them go alone to the bathroom or something, and thats when the killer strikes. Aside from that, we could also use the color scheme contrast to create different tones. When everything is all nice and dandy, the scene is well lit. However when we switch to POV of the killer, everything is dark, and this shows both when we are in POV mode, and creates a suspenseful feeling when we are in POV mode. This trend isn’t constant, as the POV shot during the murder is brightly lit, however we could add an effect to the image to show contrast from normal camera to POV and get that feeling without having to worry too much about changing lighting to keep things consistent. Having a theme playing in the background during the killer POV also helps contrast it to regular camera shots and build tension. If we did the same thing in our opening with the song mentioned in my last post. Showing people sleeping also could be implemented as watching people sleep is extremely creepy. If we had our opening be at a camp and the reason the victim is alone is because everyone else is asleep, then we could do this to add suspense. Now, it is only really creepy when done in POV, so thats something to keep in mind. Now for what I see as bad and we can use to avoid. First of all, the transition to opening credits felt artificial and takes you out of the movie. A second thing isn’t bad necessarily, but I don’t think we could implement gore and have it look convincing enough to not break immersion. In terms of not useful at all, the setting isn’t going to be al that useful, as while it takes place in a forest, all of the shots are indoors, which is something we don’t plan to do. Also things like costume are useless because it is camp counselors in uniform, and our movie will be about random campers. And that’s about it. Most of the things like lighting and POV are beneficial in teaching what to do, some is good at telling us what not to do, and not much is useless, making this overall a very good opening in helping us make our movie.
Film Project 