Logo's and Opening Titles

The logo's and opening titles are vital to setting the mood of the film. In horror films, they are usually intended to unsettle the audience.

For example, this film is titled 'Are you Afraid of the Dark?'. I like the way that the creators of this have used the red/orange colour for the title, which is a convention of the horror genre. They have used the lighted match creatively as it poses the only source of light, which is unreliable as the flame could burn out at any time, which is unsettling for the audience. The title asks a rhetorical question that makes us feel anxious, as it foreshadows that this film may trigger fear from us.

Using stereotypical images in the opening sequence is also a good idea. In this case, a clown. I like the way the editors have used this image, as it is a concept which we find "creepy". As we know the clown is intended to be scary, but his smiling face makes the image ambiguous, as a smile should make us feel comforted, but in this case, it doesn't. This is a good way of making the audience feel unsettled before the film begins, as we know that even the things that should make us feel at ease, are only there to fool us.

I particularly like this image taken from the opening sequence of 'American Horror Story' as it takes something that we shouldn't find scary and puts a twist on it. A photograph of a child should not be unsettling, but the distorted effect creates a feeling of chaos and conveys a "creepy" atmosphere. I feel like this would work well in our film, as our antagonist is a child too and a small child is not a character that is stereo typically feared. Doing something like this and distorting the image would subtly foreshadow our antagonist to the audience.

This image is taken from 'The Conjuring' and I feel it is a strong image, as the lighting is unsettling and the mis-en-scene displays a stereotypical convention. The scary house surrounded by broken branches creates an eerie feeling that automatically unsettles the audience before the film even begins.