Opening Sequence Character Types

We have looked at different thriller opening sequences and what type of characters are shown in the first two minutes of the film. This gives our group some sort of idea as to what characters we should include in our opening sequence and how we should portray these characters to the viewers. In some opening sequences of films the characters that are shown are not portrayed as clearly as they are through-out the entire film which means its very important to give off the right impression for the viewers so it doesn't make things confusing for them.

Just because the genre of our film is thriller, that doesn't necessarily mean that the first characters you see have to be the antagonist or the villain, in fact the first character that the viewers see could be innocent and lovely characters which lead to the antagonists.

In these opening sequences that i found i will be explaining how they are all different in terms of what characters are portrayed during the first two minutes...

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

In the opening sequence of the film 'the woman in black', we the viewers are straight away introduced to three characters that are young girls all playing together with tea cups and dolls. Now this is what i mentioned earlier by the characters not always being the antagonist and in fact being the innocent characters that being grow to love through-out the film, however in this case the three characters sadly come to a fast end where at the end of the opening sequence they all jump out of the window, making the opening sequence such a extreme beginning to a film. However, at the very end of the opening sequence we get a glimpse of a dark figure in the corner of the screen, this character is the main character in the film and it gives the audience an idea of what kind of character to expect during the film. This character would definitely be classed as the antagonist.

By watching this it showed our group that you don't always have to start the film off with an negative character and that you can start off with the protagonist. But at the same time you can show the antagonist at the same time without giving to much away as to who the characters are in terms of what they are and how they are going to be during the film.



SHUTTER ISLAND

There are two characters in the first two minutes of 'Shutter Island'. The first is a character who when first shown is a middle aged man, wearing a suit, long coat and hat. This says that he is quite a high class man, also the fact that he is the first character we see in the film could say that he is an important character and could be through-out the film. However, this may not be true, he may not be important at all and may just in fact be a character to start the film off, but in this case he is the main character in the film. When he walks out to the second character shown in the first two minutes he seems on edge because of his sea sickness. The second character reefers to the first character as boss which tells the viewers that he isn't as important as the first character and is slightly lower down in class, yet he is wearing similar things to the first character in terms of suit, coat and hat. By only watching the opening sequence of the film we cant really tell what type of characters the two portrayed are or who they are in relation to the film, only that the first character seen is slightly higher in class than the second one and is the second characters boss. So saying this we cant tell as viewers whether they are the antagonists or the protagonists, this is yet to discover by watching the rest of the film. By showing these to men in the first two minutes it leaves the audience asking lots of questions in terms of who they are, why are they on a ship, where are they going etc.. This is like i mentioned earlier when talking about the 'The woman in black' where they are showing you the characters but they don't want to give to much away by showing who is the antagonist or not.



by watching these two opening sequences we can see that the characters can be whoever we want and how ever many of them that we want, just so long that we don't give too much away in the first two minutes of the film. The characters could be protagonists or antagonists, but you don't want to confuse the character for both otherwise it will make it confusing for the viewers through-out the rest of the film.