- Overall i would say that our opening does follow a conventional form of a thriller film, the use of a montage is a popular opening to psychological thrillers. We found this after researching many psychological thriller and thriller film openings. Some examples of films that particularly inspired ours are...
-Bourne Supremacy (click here to see my past research on the Bourne Supremacy)
-Se7en (Click here to see my past research on Se7en) 
-The use of titles in our film opening is also conventional to that of a thriller, our credits form part of the montage which is often done in the thriller genre. The font we used is 'Moms typewriter' which works well with the images of books and words in our montage. This again follows conventions of a thriller and is especially inspired by the film 'Se7en' which also uses the iconography of books as part of a montage. The sweeping transitions of our titles aren't necessarily conventional to that of a thriller but work well in making the montage flow and work well with our concept. 
-The main plot of our opening is very conventional to that of a thriller in that it is a stabbing therefore a knife is involved which is conventional iconography of a thriller. The murder is part of a dream which is also conventional to our genre of psychological thriller as many such as The Bourne supremacy start with a dream reflecting on the psychological side of the genre. Here is a screen shot showing the stabbing in our opening...
-The character exposition in our film opening does not play a massive part as it is mostly made up of nature shots. Although, the characters used are not typically conventional to a thriller, from our audience research and personal research i have found that typically a male plays the antagonist where as in our opening it is played by a female. This challenges the dominant gender stereotype usually shown in thrillers.
-The mise en scene used in our opening generally follows the conventions of a thriller, props in particular. The use of the knife is very iconic of thriller film openings and our audience research showed that most people would relate a knife to the genre of a thriller. Other props such as a handbag and phone are used to show character exposition as well as bringing the piece to life and creating an enigma in that every day objects are used thus this could happen to anyone.
-The costume used in our opening is conventional to that of a thriller, the main character and antagonist is wearing dark clothes to represent evil and follows the conventions of most genres. The stock character and protagonist is wearing casual everyday clothes again showing that this could happen to anyone, bringing the story to life. She is also wearing a white top to show peace and innocence compared to the black that the antagonist is wearing anchoring the storyline and again following the conventions of a thriller. Here is an example of the main character, the protagonist and her costume...
-The lighting used in our opening varies from shot to shot and is covered by the effects used so is not a main part of our opening. Althought the lighting on the effects does follow that of a conventional thriller opening as the murder shots are darker than those of the flash backs.
-The sound we used in our opening, is very disjointed and mixed up creating the effect of a dream, sounds such as a music box, humming and birds have been mixed to create our final track. The main sound throughout the opening also has the same sort of effect and creates strong ambiance therefore following the idea of a dream and anchoring the images in our opening.
-The camera work used in our opening is most done through the use of a tripod to get a better standard of filming an example of a scene shot with the tripod is the murder scene. Although, some footage such as the book shots and nature shots are shot using handi cam in order to create the effect of the audience being involved in the action and to create a more enigmatic effect. This follows the conventions of a psychological thriller as there is normally some sort of disjointment involved reflected on the psychological side the Bourne Supremacy opening is an example of an opening which does this.
-The camera angles used in our opening were mainly straight in the narrative part of the opening but we then used some canted angles in the nature shots to reinforce the idea of a dream.
-The framing of our shots is mainly CU, MCU and MS so that the audience can see real detail in the objects we are filming, this also give the impression of everything being closer therefore follows the conventions of a thriller and creating an enigma. Here is an example of a MCU shot from our opening...
-The editing style of our opening is very surreal and dream like, for example 'Ghosting', 'Blurs' and 'colour washes' are used in our opening a lot this was inspired by the 'Bourne supremacy' opening which is also a dream and works really well. The transitions used in our opening consist of fading which enables the shots to flow such as in a dream. We also used black spaces in our opening to create the effect of flashing in order to make it seem more like a dream. Here is an example of this...
-The main colours used in our opening were contrasted between really bright colours to black and white in order to create the sense of confusion within the dream.
-Some visual techniques that have been used in our opening are reversing some clips creating more of a dream like effect, time stretching clips to make things seem extra slow, this worked really well placed with the fast cuts of some parts of the opening and Compressing some time for example in the street crowd shots the crowd seems to be walking really fast this again works well in creating a sense of confusion and follows the conventions of a psychological opening.
Our opening compared to the 'Bourne supremacy'
In the 'Bourne Supremacy' opening the use of a handi cam to film the action creates a sense of isjointment and little control. This also positions the audience within the action and therefore creates a thrill and a sense of excitement. - Our opening similarly uses handi cam in some parts in order to create a sense of disjointment as well as reinforcing the idea of it being a dream.
The use of a CU shot to show the man in bed positions the audience with him, therefore allowing them to feel more involved in the action as well as following the typical conventions of a thriller. A CU of the waking up shot is also used in our film opening to show the audience that it is a dream, this therefore shows that our opening is conventional to that of a thriller.
In the Bourne Supremacy Editing helps to anchor the camera shots and conform to the genre of thriller. Quick cuts are used to connote the action and create a sense of excitement to the audience. The cuts also portray the idea of fragments of memory which is what the film is based around. The cuts contain iconography specific for thrillers, a phone, photographs, disjointed faces and conversations as well as a room number '646'. This gives the audience the impression of being given clues grabbing their attention and involving them in the clip.
Our opening is also similar to this in that we have used quick cuts in our montage again to create the idea of flash backs a memories. Disjointed images are also used with the use of blurred images to create the sense of confusion which works effectively in our film opening.
The blurred images used in the 'Bourne Supremacy' opening are also a technique used in thrillers, in this opening it is used to create a sense of being unstable and unable to focus. The slow motion shots are also used for this effect. Again the same effect is used in our opening and 'Ghosting' is an effect used a lot in our opening.
From all the similarity's shown through our opening and the actual psychological thriller opening i can see that our opening is conventional to a thriller opening and we have followed and taken into consideration all the aspects and conventions of a psychological thriller when making our film opening.
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