Disscussing 3 opening films (horror and thriller)

As I continue to develop my own horror/thriller film opening project, I've been reasearching about how films established their tone, character, and suspense in just a few minutes. Having an great opening can immediately draw the attention of the audience in, which sets the expectations for the rest of the film. My goal is it create a tense, suspence opening, I've been paying close attention to cinematography, sounds, and pacing. 

In this post I tend to break down three horror/thriller openings that I found pretty effective: Scream (1996), A Quiet Place (2018), and Get out (2017). They each use different techniques to be able to build up tension, and I want to take inspiration from them from my own project.

Film Studies 

Scream (1996): The film starts out with a highschool girl Casey, whom she's home alone. She answers a phone call which seems to be harmless however it gets more threatening. The caller tells her that she's watching her and it ends with her dead in violence, which sets the stakes high.

Fiming and editiing 

Scene starts out with soft lighting, neutral lighting and slow, The camera moves slowly making everything feel normal at first. Soon the shots get tighter, and the editing becomes faster, which increases panic use of framing. Most of the shots are her isolated in the frame reinforces that she's pancking in fear.

• The phone ringing starts to become an unsetteling and strange by just hearing the ring itself and nothing else playing in the background, building os suspence 
• Background noises are like crickets, dog barking contrast with the silence of the house. 
• The voices on the phone changes from normal to menacing, which manipulates the audiences emotions.

I like how the scene opening builds suspense through any directions before any actions occure. The shift from slow pacing to quick cuts is something that I'll incorporate when my own scenen escalates. 

A Quiet Place (2018): Its an post- apocalypic setting where a family goes through a deserted store. everything feels strange, when the youngest child activiates a noisy toy it leds to deadly consequences, monsters as you can say will come after you...

Filming and Editing 

• It uses long shots and slow tracking shots in a way to show silences.
• Camera lingers on some small details (like showing the foot steps of the feet or language) by informing the audience of the films world without having to show dialogue.
• close up on some facial expressions which show emotional tension making the actions feel important.
• They implement silence as their key, since every tiny sound they make feels somewhat exaggerated or dangerous..
• Sudden burst of sound (that's coming from the toy) is horrifying, and just shows how deadly noises can be in this world
• they focus the audience attention more on ambient sounds 

The opening shows how you can create tensions without dialogue. For my filming project I want to implement silence in my own scene with a bit of suspence music in the background. Maybe tenstion to remain quiet whie something lurcks by using small sounds which can be effective. 

Get out (2017): A young man (Andre) is walking through a surburban neighborhood during the night. All of a sudden a car slowly follows him. He gets assulted and kidnapped 

Filming and Editing 

• Usages of long films makes the sence feel realistic.
• The slow pacing at the start which makes the attack more unexpected 
• smooth tracking camera movements,frequently quiet.

From this film, I like to add the idea of building suspence slowly and implemneted more slowing pacing. I would probably implement the use of diegetic sound since it could be a good way to create contrast in my scene