Group meeting 5 The Concept

The basic outline of our narrative is a female ghost haunting a young male. However, concerning our 2 minute opening sequence, we realise that we can't show the full story and can only introduce it.

As conventions of an opening sequence, we have begun with establishing the location, a city - London - and specific location Camden Town, via shots of the London underground, crowds, streets, markets etc which is inspired by Hitchcock's North by North West film. This we want to continue for half of our opening sequence as it is setting up the atmosphere and mood of the film.

Beginning with the underground we want to take the audience along a journey. We have planned our first LS shot to be of a train entering the station to symbolise the beginning of a journey. We then will have various shots of the public entering and exiting the train, going up the stairs via a circular mirrors reflection - a less advanced version of Hitchcock's but I want to use reflection in the opening sequence - and exiting the station. This is where we take the audience on a journey along the street, using a variety of shot types and angles. During the daylight changes we display a clock to reiterate that time is moving and the audience are moving with it. Shots of Camden market follow to help display that business is moving, London's culture is vast and it's night life is alive. By getting shots of the Ghost across the street from the market, we want the audience to focus on her, wondering who she is and her relevance to the story. Then we see our protagonist walking by, noticing the ghost and walking away like it was his imagination. Little does he know that the ghost has seen him, by an extreme CU shot of her eyes the audience see her glare at his walking figure. We want the audience to understand that he has been targeted by her. Once at home, the protagonist listens to the radio and hears a description of the ghost, he begins to realise that he saw her, is panicking and that's when our opening sequence ends.

Within our whole sequence we will have overlapping shots of crowds to make it look like there are ghosts in the city and not just our Ghost character. This makes our film interesting, acting as a narrative hook, and may connote that there are ghosts everywhere, hopefully freaking out the audience as they never know who's watching.

We have used Toderov's theory in our piece. Beginning with 'normal' life, equilibrium, another day in London. The overlapping of shots occur suggesting a disruption of the equilibrium/ norm, via ghosts. Our female Ghost is seen through an extreme CU and, via the threatening look she gives the protagonist, the audience know something will happen, an event that will create chaos in his life and possibly other lives. However, we haven't involved an event caused by the ghost in our opening sequence because we want our audience to keep watching and see what happens. Our genre is Thriller-Horror and, like The Woman in Black, no action has to be seen for a film to be suspenseful.