What makes an effective opening to a thriller?

The opening to any film is important as it sets the mood and the tone of the film. For a thriller film it is exactly the samehowever the pace of the openign would be faster and more like an action film in most cases.

What things do you look for in a thriller opening?
Camerawork~ the camera work in threillers you would expect to seee a lot of close ups, extreame close up, high and low angle shots. These are what you would most commonly see in thrillers as they have the most impact on an audience. The pace of the opening has to be quick cutting as it needs to have an effect on the audience to make them want to keep on watching the film and want to know more about the story and the charatcers. the camera work has to be effctive as the audience could get bored and wont continue watching it. In 28 Days Later the atmosphere in the opening scene makes the audience feel alone as does the charatcer. i had an area of mystery around it as you dont know why everyone had evactuate and he is left behind. This makes the audience more intregued to carry on watching it but also the camera work is very clever as the director has used a number of shots that are visually interesting.

Editing- as i said befer the editing has to be fast paced but not nessacerally action based. It can be jumping form one shot to the next in a quick motion or a tracking shot to follow the charatcers movements. In thrillers editing plays a very important part in making the film interesting as you constantly need the audience to be in a state of catharsis and you constantly need to surpirse them with shots and angles to show characters emotions and feelings.

Narrative~ the narrative in fims help the audience to understand what is going on or what has happened before that particular part in the story. The narrative is mainly a voice over which is done by the main character of the story. This introduces the story to us and also gives the audience an idea of what the charcter is like. Because the audience can only hear the charcters voice their imagination into what the character is going to look like has already been put into perspective. This gives the audience something to thing about diring the opening as they have not been fully iintroduced to what the charcter is like. This is an effective way of getting the story going and not giving the audience too much information but giving them enough to start their thought proccess into what the rest of the story could be.

Mise-en-scene~ this is one of the most important aspects of films in general. The costume,props, make-up, setting, etc is what makes a film. In a thriller film the costumes create a different between a good person and an bad person. You can be stereotypical with our costumes (white for good, black for bad) but you do generally see lighter colours on good guys and darker colours on bad guys however most of the thime they are not just black and white. Make-up plays a part in thrillers. For example, Dracula has a pale face but very defined cheek bones with sharp edges and darkened eyes. Where as Van Helsing has neutral make up. Depending on what type of thriller it is your props will vary. If you have an action thriller you would expect to see things like guns and high speed cars. If it is a horror thriller you would expect to see things like knives and face blood.