Over the course of making our thriller opening sequence we encountered quite a few problems and ended up making lots of changes to our sequence, so that by the end result it was completely different to our initial idea.
At first we based our idea around the title "Rush". We wanted a fast-paced sequence similar to the clips from films that we had viewed like Cloverfield. We also looked at Paranormal Activity because like Cloverfield, there was a lot of shots with the camera handheld. We felt that this would add some realism to the sequence and make the audience feel like they are there in the action and really involved. We also thought that the handheld camera would add to the fast pace.
However when it came to making our own handheld shots they really didn't work because the camera couldn't cope with that amount of movement. After cutting these from our thriller so far, the pace was a lot slower, and the title "Rush" didn't seem to fit anymore, so we had to change it.
Next we needed to work on the plot of our opening sequence. We had an initial idea of a male antagonist stalking two female protagonists, with clips building up to a confrontation at the end. However in feedback members of our target audience said that they found it hard to follow, and we realised we had crammed too much plot into such a short amount of time. We looked again at other thriller openings like Se7en and decided that we should focus on using some techniques from that for our own thriller, keeping elements from the plot or certain character more hidden from the audience, whilst drawing attention to certain close up shots of various objects instead. I also feel that the end result of our thriller is similar in a way to the opening sequence of The Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code opening cuts between action shots of unknown characters, and close ups of paintings which are significant.
We also edited all of our shots, adjusting the saturation, contrast, and adding vignettes to make the shots darker, emphasising shadows and creating a tense and mysterious atmosphere.