Genre Research Summary

We have done research into other films of our chosen genre (horror) and have found key conventions to making an effective opening sequence.
The titles are often in red text with black background, as these are colour associated with scary things like death and Halloween, we have decided to incorporate this into our opening sequence.
The music is often slow to build up tension with non diegetic sounds such as screaming and heartbeats which help create enigma for the audience, we have chosen to use these in our piece of film.
We have found the characters of a horror film are often introduced as perfect with underlying mental issues or no main character is introduced and just clips of gruesome, scary scenes are played to explain part of the plot to the audience. Perfection is often contrasted with blood and inhumane imagery which we think is a good idea and might use this in our opening scene.
With regards to mise en scene, bright rooms inside large buildings are used to create tension and contrast with dark costume. Also zombie make-up (eg. blood, contact lenses) is one of our ideas to shock the audience like in films such as 'Dawn of the Dead'.
Popular narrative codes in horror films are often ellipses, with slow music and tension also creating enigma for the audience. These are what we will apply to our opening sequence.
Cinematography is a key convention to creating an effective horror genre opening sequence, close ups, varying fast pace to slow pace editing and slow zoom shots to force the audience to focus on important images that are vital to the film.