The Others Opening Scene Analysis

I decided to look into the opening of "The Others" as our group drew a lot of inspiration from it.

The opening scene for the movie "The Others" starts by naming the production company which is "Dimension Films". The movie studios have produced many other horror films such as "Halloween", "Darkness" and the "Scream" movies. However the font and colour of how the name has been shown has changed over the years. The picture below is how the company was introduced in the movie "Scream 4":

For the first part of the opening it is black with a female voice over, presumably from the main character. This creates an enigmatic feel to the film. We were thinking of doing this but the voices you would hear were possibly a concerned father conferring with someone about how he was worried about his daughter's state of mind. By doing this, it creates suspense but also let's the audience have a feeling of what could happen through out the film. Then an image flickers in, as if it is being lit by candle light, we might like to mirror the flickering effect too. It gives the audience the feel of being in shadows, half knowing and half not knowing. It creates a sense of anticipation.

Before the title of the film is revealed, the main star is given the credit. This is suggestive of the fact that having a well known actress will make more people be inclined to watch it. However we do not have that advantage as we are using unknown actors/actresses in our opening sequence.

Then the title of the film is revealed. The font is quite plain and is white to contrast with the dark brown/black background that it is being shown on. The simplicity of the font is almost mystifying as it does not reveal anything about the movie. It is also pleasant to the eyes and clear to read. Furthermore it gives the audience a chance to focus on the background of where the text has been placed- on a drawing.

Then for the rest of the opening we are shown different drawings as the voice over keeps talking. This draws in the readers' attention to detail. Our idea was for our main character to have many different drawings of possible entities/monsters/etc. and have them showing as the opening credits come up. The camera would pan to the different drawings hung up on the wall, similarly to what is happening in the opening of "The Others". However the drawings would be a lot more sketchy and unnatural, to show her psychologically disturbed state of mind, but possibly of the same sepia tone sort of colour to them. These are the examples of some of the drawings in the opening scene (they could possibly be telling the story through that type of visual aid, leaving the audience hints about what the narration will follow):

This is the full opening scene: