Research

Before we began to produce our opening sequence, we did some research on crime/mystery genre films, as well as research on crime/mystery in general so that we could identify the typical conventions of mystery films. Doing research will help to us create a good final production.

http://www.filmsite.org/mysteryfilms.html- This website gave us information on crime and detective films and some typical conventions of this type of genre; Detective-mystery films identify the detective as being the person who solves the crime or situation through clues and their professional instinct as being a detective . The detective looks at the possible reasons and events which have lead up to the crime, and eventually considers the person who is the culprit of the crime. Suspense is usually evident in detective type films in order to engage the audience making them want to try and figure out the puzzle and trying to find clues within the narrative and who the villain is after being introduced to the main suspected character in the film. It is typical in most detective genre films that the detective is the one to find the criminal and solve the mystery/crime.

Sherlock Holmes
One of the films we looked at to give us inspiration for our opening sequence is ' Sherlock Holmes'. Here is the opening sequence from the film;

The sequence opens showing a medium shot of the detective 'Sherlock Holmes leaving a building and the use of non-diegetic sound straight away identify that the film is of a mystery genre or something suspicious is going to happen. A long shot is used showing what look like a path that the detective is following and he bumps into a man who may have something to do with a mystery the detective is trying to solve.The conventions used in this sequence are similar to the conventions used in our opening sequence; the main character is a detective however this is not revealed to the audience in our sequence and he travels along a long path focusing on three random pedestrians who could be possible suspects, conveying the idea that everyone is capable of doing wrong.

Pink Panther
this is another film sequence we look at;

Pink Panther

By watching this sequence we decided we would reveal that there has been a murder at the end of our sequence by showing a body laying dead on the floor however in a differnt location such as a wooded area. Also the cuts used appear to be fast in this sequence however after discussion we decieded that wouldnt fit in with our sequence. The way the characters where identified with there names coming up as the appeared insipered us to identify our characters to the audeince. Also the main character in this sequence was the detective and this is the same as ours.

The Lovely Bones

By watching this sequence we are insipered by the use of the black fade in transitions to allow the audience to recognise a flashback has occured, showing the positive moments the young girl had before she was murdered. We feel that our suscpecs should have one flachback each to show the audience the posiblity of why they are a suspect and it shows there negative moment that could caure them to get revenge on someone. The use of the voice over in the sequence created tension for the audience as it is the voice of the little girl who has been murdered. In our sequence we also want a tensoin to be created therefore have deided to place in a voice over in and it will be the detectives voice.