Treatment

The general storyline of the film is that an ex-girlfriend becomes obsessed with her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. She begins to follow them when they are together, she has photos of them all around her room which she draws on and scribbles out the faces. She continues her obsession by constantly going on each other facebook page and looking through their pictures and statuses, looking at the same things over and over again. She also watches a video the new couple made of them and continually watches it again and again as a form of self torture, however she takes that out on the couple and she plots to kill them.

In the opening sequence of this film you never see the face of the ex-girlfriend and all shots of her will either be from over the shoulder or a close up on an aspect of her body, this will be the same for the couple apart from when pictures are seen of the couple. The title sequence will open with a black screen and will continue to remain black until it fades into an over the shoulder shot of the ex-girlfriend peering behind a tree watching the couple walking and holding hands. The clip will jump to a shot of the ex-girlfriend looking through the facebook profiles of the couple, after this it will jump into another shot from behind looking at a printed photo of the couple and writing all over it. This shot will then fade into a black screen where the words appear “When the jealously gets out of control....” then one my one the words will fade out and jump into another shot of the girl looking at a collection of pictures of the couple all with scribbles and little notes on them. This shot will then fade into a blank screen again and the words “And it slowly becomes an obsession...” appear on the screen. This will fade out and go onto the shot of the girl watching the YouTube clip the couple had made of themselves and the next 3 shots will be of the girl continuously rewinding the clip, finally the clip after that she makes a loud bang on the table after watching the video and the screen fades into a black screen saying “created by D’mee Smith, Gianni Francis, Georgina Solomon is...” and this leads on to the last extreme close up shot of a text on a phone saying “I can see you” and that’s where our title sequence ends.

Our group decided this would be our storyline as we watched a video of what seemed to be the perfect couple and thought about how we could develop a thriller styled opening sequence based on that, however we didn’t want to include any blood or gore, yet we knew that we wanted death to be the result  as this is typical of a thriller and could make the audience question as to why the characters so obsessed, what may have triggered this behaviour and how does she kill them, without revealing any of this in our title sequence. We also like the jump cuts of shots used in the Rhianna- we found love music video as it captures the audience’s attention whilst also at the same time follows a similar storyline to our thrill title sequence with the same theme of love and destruction.  We came up with a series of ideas before finalising this all following the same idea however this thriller sequence being structured the way it is leave a lot to the audience’s imagination and creates a lot of confusion through all of the jump cuts and lack of linear flow to the shots.

Our choice of settings and locations are mainly the bedroom and also the park as these settings allow the characters to be isolated and alone creating the vulnerability for the audience whilst also at the same time emphasising the creepiness and psychotic behaviour of the ex-girlfriend character. Also because these locations are normal and all would have been places where the characters have been (the park, their bedrooms) would create a sense of reality for the audience and that would add more discomfort and instil more fright for the audience.

This opening sequence conforms to the conventions of a thriller as throughout this opening sequence not a lot it revealed for the audience which means that immediately suspicion and questions are raised from the beginning and this would make the audience want to continue watching the film to see if they can see the face of the ex-girlfriend, what she may do and how she will do this. Also there is no sights of blood and death in this and there is an simple underlying story behind the fact that the ex-girlfriends aims to kill, the running theme alongside this is love which many thriller films usually have.  The lack of dialogue in the opening scene could creation suspense for the audience as they are waiting to hear a voice and this continues to leave the audience unaware of everything that is going on within the film.

Overall this opening sequence leaves a lot to the imagination of the audience and suspense, anticipation, tension and trepidation are all created throughout this short opening sequences, many elements of the dark lighting, the isolated settings, the lack of dialogue all add to the thriller theme and contribute to this opening scene be one that fits in within the thriller genre.