The first thing the audience sees are the companies that have produced the movie, this appears to be a reoccurring theme through all opening sequences. For the first 2 minutes and 54 seconds all the audience see is a black background with the opening credits appearing and fading out. The font they have used is pointed; hinting to danger. However, this is undermined by the use of a light blue colour for the text. The colour hints to the audience that the movie is chilling or cold, this blue does not represent calmness and so it makes the viewer feel on edge. All the text is the same colour and size as the title. All of the text is centrally aligned making it easy for the text easy to read as it is not jumping from one place to another.
As well as the credits are rolling there is quiet and eerie music playing in the background that eventually becomes louder. The accompanying music helps to build suspense, but it also keeps the audience engaged. The opening credits last for a long time and are not particularly interesting, so using ascending music makes the audience think something is going to happen; this is a clever tactic to keep the audience engaged whilst the credits roll on. Another tactic used is putting the actor’s names before the title of the film. Bruce Willis is a well know actor, if an audience know he is in the film it may entice them to continue watching. Once the opening credits have finished the opening shot is of the filament of a light bulb coming on. This shot is quite lengthy, this is again to build up suspense as the music playing throughout the credits continues. The rest of the room is dark as the light bulb comes on. A common convention of psychological thrillers is the use of darkness as it makes the viewer feel unnerved and creates a vulnerable atmosphere for the characters. The audience then here a loud bang, this again creates an unnerving atmosphere, as at this point we are still unsure of where the opening shot is set. The next shot shows a woman in a dress enter the room and look at bottles of wine. Even though she had put the light on the room is still extremely dark. Again the use of harsh lighting hints to the audience something is going to go wrong. The woman examines the bottles of wine carefully before choosing one, hinting to the audience that she is either fussy or likes to look at intricate details; this could become a prominent part of her character throughout the movie. We also learn that this character could believe in supernatural things or that she is afraid of something as when she hears a noise she jumps and runs up the stairs.
The lighting used throughout the opening sequence appears to be very harsh lighting. A lot of the shots are dark with artificial lighting to highlight things in the frame and to create shadows that would not necessarily be there in natural light. The prominent colours in the opening sequence are black and grey; this is because the opening credits were shown on a black background and the harsh lighting used creates shadows as well as leaving much of the room in darkness. There is not a great deal of camera movement in these few minutes, the camera frames change, but the camera is static for most of the shots.
If I were to try and guess the narrative from just these few minutes of the movie I would guess that this woman will become involved with some kind of supernatural being or event or that her house is home to something supernatural. These few minutes do not reveal much about the movie and hardly contains any action. This is similar to our plan for our opening sequence.
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