Narrative

My horror film opening sequence has a restricted narration, as it gives only minimal information about the narrative, all the while keeping the audience on edge. It doesn't let out too much detail, so that the audience can work it out for themselves. The character identification is quite subjective, as we only get to see what the characters see or do, without further knowledge of their thoughts.

Looking at Vladimir Propp's Theory of Narrative, in the opening sequence we would see 2 of the possible 7 characters: the villain and the victim.The villain, being the ruthless masked murderer, and the victim being the innocent woman who dies.

If we however looked at Tzvetan Todorov's Theory of Narrative, even in the opening sequence we can establish a few of the five stages that Todorov suggested are conventional in every film.

• the equilibrium: when the victim is sitting at home, eating her snack and everything seems normal.
• a disruption of the equilibrium: when she goes to take out the rubbish and we see the murderer hiding with a knife.
• a recognition of the disruption: when the woman receives the first anonymous call and starts hearing strange noises.

Those are the tree out of five stages that can be recognised in this short film. Even though the opening sequence isn't a very long one, quite a few of the narrative structures can be applied to it, suggesting that it is good in a way that goes along with conventional Hollywood structures.

Since this is an opening sequence, the narrative had to show some elements of the actual film, but not give anything too important away, so the audience doesn't get boring and stop watching. That's why in this opening sequence we can see a single killing, with no idea who the killer might be or any idea about why he/she might be killing people. This should keep the audience interested enough in finding out, to keep them watching the rest of the movie.

This opening sequence tells a short story, as the order of events in it is in chronological order, with no flashbacks, flashforwards or dream sequences. It's a linear narrative.