RESEARCH: Inspiration

Lately I have started to research movie openings. I have watched tens of movie openings over the past few days. I was looking for inspiration for our sequence but at the same time I wanted something different, unusual to the genre. I have seen openings for thriller movies but with sub-genres such as action, horror, adventure and drama. I didn't want to look at psychological-thrillers to have a wider choice of movies. Also we are open to change the sub-genre of our movie but we will try and keep to the original idea.

I looked at movies such as "Triangle", "The Next Three Days", "Buried", "Brothers", "The Box", "Resident Evil: Afterlife", "Winter's Bone", "The Lovely Bones", "Salt", "Knight and Day" and more.

The two openings that looked similar to what we wanted to achieve were in "Triangle", "Winter's Bone" and "The Next three Days". I especially liked "The Next Three Days", I actually watched the whole movie after watching the opening. This shows me that it was successful.
All of those openings were similar in some ways but different in others. They all created suspense and curiosity among the audience in different ways.

"Triangle" was mainly in a house, showing a mother and her child. We can clearly see that she is struggling. The dark rooms and use of close ups made the scenes dramatic and not the characters themselves. However there were moments which showed that something might not be right for example a door bell but no one was at the door.

"Winter's Bone" starts with really creepy, dark and old music which makes the opening very creepy from the beginning. Also the location looks quite dark. It's an old house/farm surrounded by trees. This isolation may suggest that evil things happen there ;-)

"The Next Three Days" is a bit different to the previous two. It starts with a flash forward which at the beginning makes no sense but as you watch the movie everything is explained. The flash forward was only few seconds long but it already made me curious what could drive someone to that (we could hear someone begging for life in the back seat while the main character was driving). The next scene was in a restaurant where two couples had an argument about women who are bosses. This would also make more sense later on. The next scene is at home. A family eating breakfast, being normal and in no way dangerous or creepy. However it's just then when the wife discovers a blood stain on her jacket and tries to wash it off. I really like the use of flash forward as it made me curious about the movie.