Planning: Opening Scene Narration - Miss Begum

Opening Scene Narration

Introduction:

My opening scene narration is written to solidify our final idea and to make the structure of the narrative clear, this would also be useful during the making of the opening as it provides narrative for the director to imagine the story and put their own view on it. As it is just an opening, the audience did not need to necessarily understand the narrative as a lot of films are effective this way, but it is important for the director to understand the narrative of the opening to get the general tone of the film.

Opening scene narration:

The scene begins with an establishing shot of a man slowly walking through a graveyard.he is wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie, indicating that he has been at a funeral. The weather is gloomy and therefore there will be low key lighting, reflecting the man's mood.

As the man is walking away a panning shot is following him, once it stops, he continues walking and there is a straight cut to the inside of a home. The door is the focal point with a medium shot. The door opens and the man from earlier, still wearing the suit enters this home and as he closes the door behind him, a girl is visible behind him who is bruised and extremely pale, staring at him as he closes the door. The man does not notice the girl. The house is very well lit, to show that there are no abnormalities, until the man picks up a chair that was out of frame in this medium shot and the chair has blood on it. The man casually begins to walk towards the staircase and we start to see many dead bodies scattered around the house, both male and female. As the man walks up the stairs which is shown in an extreme close up shot of his shoes, another body is visible on the stairs. The audience would be very confused at this point as this man shows no interest to the dead bodies in the house, although they will wonder who's house it is and why the man is there.

As the scene develops, there is a medium shot when the man enters a bedroom, he appears to walk over to his already open wardrobe and goes to get his jacket, as the man closes the door to his wardrobe, we see a victim who is tied up and barely conscious, wounded and hidden in the corner of the room, this man is only visible when the wardrobe door is shut. However when it is open the male victim is clearly visible and it is clearly more evident the suited man has descended into madness.  As the man walks out into the corridor he turns off the light in the bedroom and a figure of someone is visible in the darkness, however the man does not notice this and turns back around to turn on the light, walks into the room and reaches for a phone that has been left on the bed. Yet again he leaves the room and turns off the light, the figure is visible again behind him, he is still unaware that someone is clearly after him. As the man continues to walk around his house there are still more bodies visible, as well as photo frames on window sills which contain pictures of random people, other possible victims, all the photos contain people who look nothing like the suited man.

Towards the end of the opening we see the man walking down the stairs from a high angle medium shot, and then a straight cut to a long shot outside of the house. The man is seen walking away from the house but the camera does not follow him, after the man is out of frame the camera tilts up to see the girl that has been supposedly following him place one hand on the window she is standing at, looking in his direction. The camera then pans and we see the man walking off into the public in a very casual manner, as he has been throughout the scene. The scene then fades to black. At this point in the opening, the audience are intrigued as well as extremely frightened and many questions can be asked. The audience do not know who the man is exactly, why he has presumably done these things, they also do not know why the girl is following him, her movement is not shown which instils a great amount of fear into the audience.

Audience response:

Throughout the opening the audience would feel suspense and confusion. I aim for the opening to be very tense as there is no clear narrative as to why there are dead bodies in the house this man is in, also the fact there is a very pale, wounded girl who is following him. The start of the opening should confuse the audience, the middle would frighten them due to the amount of dead bodies in the house, as well as the man's casual attitude to this. The end of the opening should leave the audience in disgust as well as frightened, they should be asking themselves questions and be eager to see more.