Initial Treatment

For the opening sequence, I want the storyline to be about a young girl who is being tortured by a man with mental health problems. She is being held hostage in his house and has no way to escape. I want there to be flashbacks containing scenes of him cutting her hair whilst she is tied up, him torturing her with hot metal (brand), beating here, but all the while only showing his hands.


The story will be about a girl who has been brutally tortured at the hands of a psychopath , and is now hiding in a room at the end of the corridor. The camera will be from the mans point of view, where he can hear her breathing heavily and sobbing slightly in one of the rooms around him. The sequence will end with a flash a door slamming, and him abruptly turning around. The rest of the film will be about him trying to find her, and when he does, she ends up killing him. The girl grows into a woman and ends up in a mental asylum where the memory of him still chasing her is so real that even the audience can't tell if he's still really there or not. The film would end in her committing suicide in the same way as he would have killed her, hair cut off, scarred, terrified. 


Shadows of the man walking across the corridor can be used to create an eery effect, and as he walks, his blood stained clothes and possibly a concealed weapon could be shown, starting from his shoulders, rolling down to his shoes in front of the door. The flashbacks will be in black and white to show what is present and what is past tense, and the titles will be flashed on screen along with the flashbacks. Slow motion can be used when he is turning around using an arc shot.

Ideas For Opening Sequences

We started off our meeting confirming that we weren't going to create an opening sequence for a comedy or a drama, so we then had to decide between us whether we were going to create an opening for a thriller or a horror. We discussed how we could use camera angles and different effects to our advantage and came to a conclusion that we were going to create a horror from a p.o.v angle so that it would look realistic and be more efficient for us to film in the time we have.

In more detail, we will have one of us holding the camera purposely shakily, to create a tense, realistic p.o.v shot, going up the hallway leading up to the door at the end of Sarah's hallway. The flashbacks will be pure white and we will be flashing in the titles in a plain black font as it goes on. In the flashbacks, we will be including extreme close ups and arc shots to show the characters past. 

We chose horror because we can create it up to a good standard using the equipment, programs and props we have, compared to an action, which we might not have the right equipment for. We want it to end after a series of flashbacks, at the end of the hallway, so that too much information isn't given away, but an essence of the film is portrayed.