Insomnia (2002) - Opening Titles by David Julyan

This is an example of a symbolic opening; instead of using acting/actors to create a sense of fear or dread they use extreme close ups of objects and very intense and dramatic music.
It begins with a white screen followed by the presentation of the credits which appears by seeping through the white background as though it is being absorbed into the frame. There are several magnified close up camera shots of white woven material that is then soaked up by blood which creates an unsettling image; it resembles the defrosting process of meat. There are also aerial shots of ice capped mountains.The cuts between the different shots are smooth and flow easily into the next scene-similar to the sensation of falling in out of sleep.The music used is almost tide like- rising and falling in volume, going from low to high then reaches a very high note which consequently occurs at the same time the blood is absorbed into the woven material. Establishing shots are included towards the end of the sequence which reveal the setting.

Treatment

Patrick is a detective. He was recently involved in an accident and has only just recovered and although he has been told that it is too soon to return to work he insisted to return straight away. While at work he finds work stressful and begins to have nightmares whereby a man is standing over a dead girl's body. Consequently, the case they are working on seems very similar to his dreams and as the days go by the dreams become more vivid and slightly altered-the face of the man standing over the body becomes more like his. When all clues appear to lead to him he begins to doubt his innocence and decides to turn himself in. However, just before he does, two other murders occur. Through examining all the murders more closely he discovers that all the murders are linked somehow and also link to his accident. It turns out that he was close by whent the crime took place-in the wrong place at the wrong time scenario. He was also up to no good...buying drugs. When he comes in contact with the killer, the killer threatens him-if you tell on me i will tell on you and then kill everyone who is close to you. So Patrick doesn't tell. The killer is not real Patrick is a schizopherinic and he is in fact the killer, the dead girl was his daughter who he killed, and the girl on the swing in his dreams reflects his mental state of mind-he still believes she is alive.

Preliminary Task

The main aim of this task was to familiarise ourselves with the camera and to demonstrate some of the filming and camera shots we learnt for instance, the "over the shoulder" shot. Our over the shoulder shots were almost perfect except we failed to meet the 180 degree rule.

Preliminary Task

The main objective of the preliminary task was to get ourselves familiar with the equipment and the variety of camera techniques that could be used in our film. While filming our short clip, we were able to experiment with the different functions of the camera, different camera angles and techniques allowing us to learn along the way the possible difficulty's we could face when filming the opening of our thriller film.

One lesson we learnt by carrying out our preliminary task is the '180 degree rule'. As we were unable to successfully use it in the preliminary task, we can now be more careful so this mistake could not be repeated while filming our final piece.

Overall i believe our preliminary task proved a success, although we were not accurate in using all the techniques, our mistakes made us more aware of what could go wrong so we are now able to plan ahead when we starting filming for our final piece. During the task we carried out 'over the shoulder' shots, tracking shots and mid-shots.

Audience Research

As a part of our thriller project, we carried out audience research in order to learn about our potentioal audience. We distributed questionnaires to people ranging from the ages of 15-25, and presented our results below.

Media Questionnaire Audience

Introduction

As a group we aim to create the opening of a psychological thriller. In order to achieve this we will be up-dating our blog regularly with our development in research, planning and the making of our thriller sequence. Tasks such as Audience research, preliminary task, storyboarding and test shots will all be included on the blog to demonstrate our progress. An evaluation will also be written by each member of our group to illustrate how we came to each decision in the production of our film.