The Orphan- Analysis of the first 15 minutes of a similar film

The Orphan- 2009

Tag line- There's something wrong with Esther.

An American psychological thriller about an average family who adopt a little girl named Esther but she has a hidden secret which becomes a huge problem for the Coleman family.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1044382233/

Analysis-

The film opens with the title sequence. The titles begin with the picture of a womans eye. The credits are shown in a simplistic text.

The next shot is of the womans mouth and the colour tone changes from a natural tone to a negative tone which suggests that maybe she has two personalities and her true personality comes out as she is putting on her make up as the font of the titles changes to a scratched font instead of the simple font it was in at the beginning of the sequence.  I think that this idea would work really well in our film because it leaves the storyline open to interpretation because it is giving small hints about what our film is going to be about which is the kind of thing that we need in our film because it is all based around the audience not knowing what is going to happen next and the build up of tension which works really well in the opening title sequence.
The change of the colour tones works really well with the non-diagetic music as the music changes tempo throughout the opening of the film and a change in tempo suggests that there will be danger or that something unexpected will happen during the film it also again suggests the possible change in personality. It can also change the audience's perspective of the film, making them wonder what is going to happen next. I think that the change of the tempo in the music will be a good idea for our two minute film because it can make the audience feel tension or fear, without actually showing anything that might give away our storyline.

The opening scene is of a man and woman talking to a councillor. This is an usual way to start a film and introduce main characters because a stereotypical way of starting a film would be to have an establishing shot of either an important room or the town/city they are living in. However, this makes the film different from most other films. Also, it highlights the fact that either both or one of the main characters is seeing a councillor for a reason but we don't yet know why. throughout all of the opening of the film the director (Jaume Collet-Serra) gives away subtle hints about the storyline of the film but they are so subtle you cannot work it out straight away. this would be an extremely good way to open our film because even though most films open with an establishing shot which means you include important things such as location, mood and characters, this is method that is very rarely used in films other than psychological thriller because it doesn't give away major details, it gives you the bare minimum but it is just enough to make someone want to watch the rest of the film.

The second scene is an establishing shot of an orphanage. Because the opening scene wasn't an establishing shot, this shows that this scene shows importance and that something significant is going to happen in the house. The camera tracks forwards as the car drives towards the house making it feel as if the audience are been invited inside. This would be a good technique that we could use in our two minute film however, we could use it in a different context. For example, it could be seen as trying to get the audience to feel as if they shouldn't know what is about to happen drawing them into the story, building tension up throughout the film. However, we would not have the equipment to do this shot effectively because we wouldn't be able to track for long period of time without using extra equipment.
Following this, the two parents who we see at the beginning of the film are looking to adopt a child. They enter the orphanage and hear a girl (Esther) singing upstairs who is by herself. The song she is singing is the song that we hear at the beginning of the film which immediately makes the audience think that Esther is dangerous.
However, she is singing the song softly and slowly which makes her sound innocent and so the audiences perspective of the changes because she seems innocent and harmless but it still leaves a feel of uncertainty about her.
We first see Esther through a crack in the door which tells the audience straight away that she likes to be alone.The door then opens and it becomes an establishing shot of the room so we can see the environment that she is in. The camera then tracks forwards so we can see Esther properly. This shows that Esther is an important character because the shot just focus's on her and because we see her from a distance it is as if she doens't want to be seen because she is hiding something. This makes the audience feel as if they are invading her privacy, they feel like they shouldn't be there.

Another thing which links back to the title sequence is the fact that in this medium close up we see that Esther is painting and the titles looked as if they were being splashed by paint which again makes you think she has too personalities. I don't think that this would work for our film as well as it does for The Orphan because we are only going to make the first two minutes of a film and so i don't think we will have enough time to make links as subtle as these and make the film attractive to an audience and keep them involved in the film. I think if we were making a film length film we would be able to use subtle hints because we would have the whole story to keep the audience guessing whereas we only have two minutes and it might make our film seem as there is too much information in such a short space of time.

Esther is wearing the same dresses as girls we see before we meet Esther at the orphange but hers look very old fashioned compared to the other girls in this long shot whose dresses look like average school girl dresses and Esther also has black ribbons tied around both of her wrists and her neck which makes her stand out from the rest of the children showing she is different and possibly dangerous because people don't tend to cover their wrists and neck up unless they have something to hide.

In the next scene we see that the couple have adopted Esther. Her file is thick showing that there is a lot of infromation about her that we, the audience don't get to see. This makes you want to know what the information says about her past as we don't know anything about who or where her parents are or why she was up for adoption. It gives away no details about Esther herself.