Title Sequence Research - The woman in black

Like I have previously said, our film is similar to the films, 'The woman in black.' Therefore, I have done some research into the title sequence as I feel that it will help us understand the types of music and cinematography techniques to use.

The woman in black:

Before the title sequence takes place there is a short scene featuring three children having a tea party. It shows them looking up at someone followed by them walking to the window and jumping out; to end the scene a black figure can be seen in the corner looking at the window. This is important to the story line as it sets the time period - because of the clothes and setting. Also, it gives a bit of back ground information to the story line/plot. We could use similar ideas for our film, such as beginning with the hanging scene. We could make this look like it is a dream afterwards with Agnes waking up in bed as if from a nightmare. This will help us present our genre, and it will give the audience some back ground information about our story line. The music used is creepy and makes the audience think of dolls and children, this juxtaposes what is occurring on the screen so creates a very creepy atmosphere.

To follow, the scene fades out to white which represents death and also juxtaposes the black. The distributors and actors names fade on in black as if they are pushing through fog; this links to later when Radcliffe's character visits Eel March House, as it is surrounded with fog. In between the titles fading on, there are nearly-transparent clips of rings being put on fingers, a hand stroking a pregnant belly and a woman in a white dress' face and eyes. Finally, the title of the film fades on and then the screen fades out to white. We can use ideas such as having our titles fade on in a colour that reflects the genre of our film and will also foreshadow that something bad will occur. We will possibly make our title sequence over the hanging scene to give a bit of background information to our story, then we could either fade the scene out to black or white to have our title appear or fade onto the screen.

By using these methods, we hope to represent what genre our product will be with the help of the sounds, editing and mise-en scene.