"What is relevant to my film opening?"

The codes and conventions that are relevant in our thriller movie opening are codes and conventions taken from ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Blood’. “The Dark Knight” presents codes an conventions such as sudden changes in diegetic music, when a significant character is introduced to the audience, for example, “the Joker.” There is also a sudden change in non-diegetic music, when something which is potentially frightening happens, for example when the joker takes off his mask for the first time and speaks his first line: “I believe what ever doesn’t kill you, simple makes you stranger”.

Other thriller conventions presented to the audience is quick fast pace shots, extreme close ups and a point of view shot is shown of a significant object. Another thriller that presents codes and conventions in “Blood.” In the first scene of the movie a man is running and screams through a train. This is s classic sign of a thriller movie and is similar to “The Dark Knight”, when the hostages start to run and scream. Both films also include uses of weapons as a sword is used in “Blood” guns are used in “The Dark Knight”.

Heavy breathing is also a diegetic sound that’s used in ‘Blood’ to create a sense of tension and this is also a very effective use of conventions. A technical code in both thrillers is when there is subdued lighting, as the audience cannot clearly see and lighting is dimmed. This helps audience to get in the mood and settle down fore the movie. In ‘Blood’ there is a significant point, where the music is especially eerie. We can hear the music but cannot see when it is coming from making it non- diegetic. This adds mystery to the film. This also adds a negative feeling and also a cold feeling there is also a good use of flickering lights. This is eerie and scary and denotes bad luck and perhaps instability.

Lastly the credits at the beginning of the thriller ‘Blood’ pop up slowly and the background is red. The credits then fade out into an establishing shot. This may be used in our thriller opening to help bring tension at the beginning of our thriller.
Four things that we have decided that we might like to use in our opening scene of a thriller movie are;
Non diegetic music,
Running and screaming,
Flickering lights and other lighting and
Quick shots

We feel that each one of these will add a great effect to our piece, the same way that ‘Blood’ and ‘The Dark Knight’ have used certain codes and conventions to make the opening scene brilliant.
One thins that we do not think we will use in out thriller opening will be use of weapon as we feel that we can get tension across without the use of weapons.