Script Writing - How Should I Start Off My Film Opening?

    Hey everyone, welcome back to another post. For today's post, I want to do discuss my script writing and how it's starting off so far. To note, I'm still very early in the writing process and any changes can occur in the future, so try to take what I say now with a grain of salt.

    To begin with, I want the story to have a very mysterious tone but have something specific happen for it to become immediately scary. Granted, there can be other options but this one seems to really stick out to me the most since I've seen it other movies in the past. One of such, would be the film Lights out, where the main character Cleaner Esther would close up the textile factory that she works in. While doing so, when she would turn off the lights, a dark figure would appear before her and then soon after, would disappear. I feel like this can really represent the idea of psychological horror, specifically for an opening, since a creature or creepy figure would mess with the main character mentally, making them question of what is real and what's not. If anything, I might replicate this scene with some minor tweaks so that I'm not completely copying and pasting it to my film opening.

    Moving forward, I want there to be an instantaneous cut that would imply that the first scene was a flashback. The idea I'm going for is to show that the first scene was through the eyes of the main character and how it traumatized them a lot. Now, I know that this is only a film opening and would typically last only two minutes, however, I still want to give my audience full attention and that they would want to actually watch this as if it were a full length movie. 

    After the cut from the first scene, I want it to go right into the main character talking to a therapist about his problems. This idea is still experimental since there could other factors that would challenge it and make it hard to do it; like props or setting. I'm just being optimistic here and hoping for the best opportunity that this can work out for my production. One other idea that could be a replacement to the one I said before, could be the main character would zone out after reliving the moment in a flashback while in a interview about what had happened that night. But, overall, I still have to work on what to decide on with my partner and if these could play out right for when we start officially producing.

Citations

https://whatculture.com/film/10-horror-movies-with-spine-chilling-opening-sequences