For the film opening, we want to create suspense and build tension by revealing information about the character little by little (of how unstable she is). Before drawing a storyboard, we searched for the following pictures in order for us to have a brief idea of our composition for each frame that we are going to shoot.
We decided to do some tweaking to our initial idea and storyboard that we planned. Here is our second idea for our sequence:
1) Solid black background with faint diegetic sound of someone walking along the hallway
2) Sharp cut to hallway -
During the lesson, we discussed about the lightings that we were going to use. We searched images of creepy hallways and as a result we agreed to go with the greenish/blue lighting/colour as this makes it mysterious and creates a sense of unease.
3) Camera slowly zooms in from an empty eerie hallway with a door at the end of the hall and continues to zoom through the peephole of the door where we see a woman sitting at her desk
4) Camera pans the room to her desk where we see her wall full off cut out faces and magazine pages and there is a point of view shot of the woman working. The audience sees her wrinkly old hands cutting pieces out from magazines. Things on her desk include : tape, scissors, magazines, sewing tools
5) She gets up to leave (camera still in point of view) to the bathroom and stops in front of the mirror, her face and identity is revealed to the audience for the first time as an old lady.
6) Shot cuts to the back of her head while looking at the mirror, showing a few grey hair and skin of her back
7) Extreme close up shot as she slowly pulls a strand of grey hair. This connotes violence and frustration (and her insecurity) the character has towards herself (self destruction).
8) Strand of hair lands in the sink and we see that there are many strands (emphasizes her old age)
9) Woman walks out of the toilet and camera zooms out to wide shot of her room gradually
where body/leg can be seen hanging out of the bathtub with blood dripping
This is the storyboard for this idea and a video to explain the camera movement in each frame:
AESTHETICS: ORPHAN As we watch the movie, there is a gradual change of lightings from the beginning to the end. Initially, ambient lighting used which makes the atmosphere appear bright and normal. However later on in the movie where Esther is in the toilet kicking and screaming, the lighting and colours become darker. This suggests that there has been a change in mood and emotion, and that everything is no longer normal. The dull and minimal colours in the scenes gives a sinister mood, foreshadowing danger for other characters as we approach the ending of the movie.
We will apply this to our film opening by decreasing the saturation of our film (also using colour correction and adjust the lighting) and have it mostly dark/black to create the same mood and feel.
DON'T BREATHE
During the scenes in the basement (which is during the climax of the film), the lighting and temperature of the movie changes to a cooler tone of blue and grey. However, when the characters are not in the basement, the colours are warm, consisting of orange and brownish tones. The colour these scenes succeed to create a very eerie and mysterious feel to the film (building up tension) by using strong shadows along with these colour selections. We thought of applying this to our own film opening by emphasising warmer tones throughout.
Has mental illness - wants to look young; she does this by killing young, beautiful girls and using their skin to sew onto her face
Lonely, depressed, and insecure
Single - lives alone in an old apartment
Killer
Her Appearance:
Doesn't look her age (around 40)
Skinny, always have narrow/slanted posture to reflect her insecurity
Pale, white skin
(Slightly) Wrinkly skin
Thin - to give an impression of fragility and weakness
Tall, Slender
Inspiration -
1) Annie Wilkes from Misery (1990)
Annie is a psychotic, former nurse who is a number one fan of romance novels, including the Misery series by Paul Sheldon.
She has some type of mental illness that seems to border the lines of being manic-depressive, and is also suffering from a severe case of paranoia.
There is a connection between Annie and our character as they are both mentally ill and obsessed over one particular thing to an extent where they are no longer humane.
3) Mother Gothel from Tangled
Her similarity with our character is that she wants to stay youthful. She achieves this by trapping and keeping Rapunzel in a tower, using her power.
3) Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs
Jame Gumb or known as “Buffalo Bill”, is a transsexual, and particular disturbing antagonist for kidnapping overweight ladies and removing their skin as if they were cattle. He does this to create a female skin suit to hide his manhood.
He links with our character as they both own a workroom in a basement, and kills women for their skin.
4) Evil Queen (Ravenna) from Snow White and the Huntsman
She captures young women into her Kingdom to drain their youthfulness. The reason for this is to be immortal, young, and beautiful for eternity.
5) Esther from Orphan
Esther is really a 33 year old woman (who looks like a 9-year-old) with a rare disease that stops her from ageing (in appearance). She goes into peoples homes all sweet and innocent, then tries to engage in sexual activities with the man of the family. When he says no, she takes revenge and kills all the family.
Like our character, she is a murderer and has absolutely no mercy/regret after killing people. She is emotionally unstable as she is constantly having mood swings, and raging.
A mood board is an arrangement of images, materials, pieces of text, etc., intended to evoke or project a particular style or concept.We took a series of photographs from the internet in order to create our mood board:
I have decided to work with Prima and Claire as we have very similar ideas and different skills that we believe would be able to produce an interesting piece for this project. During our discussion, we decided to do a psychological thriller opening:
We brainstormed some ideas and came up with a brief plot in order to make the production process easier. To start off, we fused some ideas of movies to create a unique character that we will base our opening on. We came up with a character who is unique and has a mental illness so that it fits in with our genre.
TITLE : LIMERENCE
Our opening sequence is going to focus on creating tension by slowing revealing the character's dark intentions and her true self, leaving the audience eager to know what will happen next.
Wall full of faces of beautiful celebrities
panning of camera from wall/around the room to the entrance of toilet
close up of woman in front of mirror
plucks white hair - exaggerated diegetic sound
touches skin (aged, flaky and with wrinkles) while heavy breathing
sudden fast faced camera work reflecting her emotions
walks to desk
close up of vinyl needle playing (focused on vinyl but blurred background can see woman walking towards desk)
woman starts cutting pieces of magazine faces
zoom in of rusted scissors and messy workplace
shot of her back bending over desk hunched over (can see spine and aged skin)
slowly pan to show finished work of complete collage
zoom out to see the whole room + entrance of toilet
dead body can be seen hanging out of bathtub with curtains
camera focuses on dead body
We went with the title "Limerence" as we wanted our title to be short, with a deeper meaning that links with our character. The word "limerence" reflects our character's desire and obsession towards looking young beautiful.
How is meaning created in this clip through the use of the micro-elements?
To start off, I drew a mind map and jotted some keywords/ideas as I was watching the opening:
In this opening sequence of the movie Limitless, various of meanings are constructed through the use of the micro-elements: sound, cinematography, mise-en-scene, and editing. We are hinted that the movie is going to about something/someone unordinary as the title of the film is called "Limitless", meaning without end or boundaries.
The audience gets a brief idea that the genre of the film is action-thriller. This is expressed through the horizontal tracking movement of the camera to show dead bodies of men, implying that the main character (speaking) could be in danger, or possibly being hunted down. This idea is reinforced in the shot just before that, showing the broken security camera which also creates enigma to the audience of whether "who is after him and why?". The pounding sound of someone banging the metal door at the beginning also builds up tension as it connotes violence. As we zoom away from the inside of the building, there are sounds of siren, again meaning that the area is unsafe and the police are on their way. The serious soundtrack used in this opening sequence starts to get repetitive towards the end however tension is built through the interference of diegetic sounds such as (again) sirens, people talking, the ambulance, etc.
The opening establishes that the movie is set in the modern period in a large city. We are given this information by the use of establishing shot of the luxurious penthouse in the middle of the city. There is a fast pedestal camera movement showing a tall building which eventually goes up to show the protagonist. The building and city lights show us that this is set in an urban area.
The movie starts off by informing that the main character has incredible abilities and is more superior than the rest. This is shown through the very low angle shot where the protagonist is standing upright in the middle of the highest floor in the building. He is looking down at a very high spot above everyone else therefore suggests that he could be special and different. He is wearing a suit so this could be a connotation that he could be an important businessman. Another shot which hi lights the character's ability is the continuous zooming in effect of the character's perspective as he is looking down to the streets below him. This suggests that the protagonist is able to see beyond other people as we are shown specifically into the inside of a persons brain.
The main character is perceived as a brave and imperturbable being as he managed to speak in a calm manner despite the violent situation going on behind him. He stands there, unafraid of height and everything else unlike the sound of the muffled man shouting as he tries to get inside. The close up of his shoes leaning out of the building also reinforces this suggestion as he is not terrified of death (and height).
As I was watching I saw something that I thought was interesting. I recognised that although the title refers to being infinite and boundless, there are lots of squares (doors and buildings) especially boxes in the opening which links to the idea of being trapped. I assume that the contrasting ideas could refer to the character having "limitless" abilities but at the same time trapped in something inevitable.
