Research into a thriller opening scene

 

The Purge opening scene:

 

 

 

 

The clip starts with a POV camera angle of a remote-control vehicle that looks like a scary baby, owned and driven by a boy who was trying to scare his mother. After the mother sees the scary baby, she asks the boy to come out for dinner. The rest of the scene is dialogue about the upgrades the boy has made to his remote-control vehicle, and about the purge, and why it is seen as necessary in this film amongst the characters. Based on the fact that this film is a thriller, and from this opening scene, I would guess that in the rest of the film, the baby drone thing starts malfunctioning and becoming dangerous and scary to the people in the house, and so they would have to go outside in the middle of the purge, which would lead to more tension and danger.

 

 

Based upon this opening scene, I would say that this film is targeted at teenagers, especially 15-19-year-old boys. This is because it is clearly going to be a violent film, with tense and scary films, and stereotypically men, especially younger men prefer that kind of films. The genre of this film is thriller. You can tell this from the opening scene because of the tense first part of the opening scene when the drone is approaching the mother. Also, you can tell because of the dialogue between the mother and son about the purge and how they are protected, but evidently are not going to be protected otherwise they wouldn’t make the film about them. In this scene, 2 characters are introduced. One is a mother, and the other is her son. They clearly have a good relationship and are shown to be fortunate financially, as they live in a big secure house. They talk for the majority of the second half of the opening scene and seem pretty unsuspecting of the events to come.

 

 

The camera is used very uniquely in the opening scene. It starts with a POV low angle shot. We can tell that this is a remote-controlled vehicle being operated by someone who isn’t there but is looking through the camera on this device. The camera work is very effective, because despite being a low angle shot, when the vehicle looks up at the mother, she doesn’t look strong and intimating (like low angle shots usually are used for), but rather vulnerable to the threat the device could pose.

 

 

The sound of this opening scene is also very effective. The first part of the scene is a combination of scary, one note non-diegetic soundtrack and unsuspecting diegetic ambient sound. The second part of the scene has diegetic dialogue between the mother and the son, which explains the events that may occur in the night ahead. This dialogue is paired with the shot/reverse shot technique that is very fluently used to make the conversation more realistic and feel like it’s actually happening

 

 

In conclusion, I believe that this was a successful opening scene because it sets the scene very well for a thriller. It has the scary drone part of the scene which puts the audience on edge right from the get-go, whilst also explaining to the audience what the purge is and how it works (foreshadowing the context of the danger they are going to be in later).