Inspirations for opening scene - Miss Miller

We need inspiration when making our opening thriller clip because seeing something that scares us from another film, can be used in our opening to present the same feelings towards our target audience. This is my inspirations for mise-en-scene, editing and cinematography.


Mise-en-scene is everything you see in a camera shot in a film, it is made up of five different elements: Setting and iconography, costume,hair and make up, facial expressions and body language, lighting and colour and positioning of characters or objects. I took my inspiration from The woman in black because the little girls tea cups are mysterious and create tension, the little girls dresses and old fashioned hair shows us the era that the film is set to give the audience a better understanding of things that may go on and why, the scary stillness of the woman in black creates tension as we don't know if she is going to jump out and scare us, the dark lighting when she is around shows us that she is the antagonist, the positioning of the killer behind the camera scares the audience because it is as if she is behind us when watching the film which creates fear and enigma.

Cinematogophy is The art of movie photography and camera angles including both the shooting and development of the film. I took my cinematoraphy insiration from 'The devil inside', A high angle shot is used to show the audience the room Maria is in and whats in it. The working man's uniform shows us that Maria is in a mental institution which is mysterious and makes the audience curious of why she is there. Also the high angle shot could represent a security camera watching Maria in case she does anything bad, this makes the audience see her as very sinister which is conventional to a thriller movie. Also an extreme close-up is used is ued to show Maria's arm which has cuts on it. This creates a sense of mystery again, as of why she has cut herself. The extreme close up makes her arm cover the whole shot which looks very gory and strange which are conventional themes to a thriller movie.

Editing is used after a movie has been filmed, it helps the film run smoothly. A reaction shot is used to show that the mother is in pain, we can see this when she gets stabbed and the camera instantly jumps to her screaming face. This shows us the horrific pain she's in after being stabbed and also makes the audience feel sorry for her as the shot of her face indicates how much she is hurt, this reaction shot also makes the audience curious of what she can do to fight off Esther after being stabbed which creates tension. Pain and curiosity are themes linked to thriller films such as 'Orphan'.