For our AS media film opening we decided to have our initial victim as a female, as in horror films a female is seen as generally more vulnerable which is the feel we wanted for her character. However she isn't a "Mary sue", she is not at all a conservative character, as in the opening she is on her way to pick up some drugs. This will be further emphasised through use of mise en scene, where in her flat there will be various explicit and non conservative items such as lighters, cigarettes and alcohol.
She'll be wearing dark, grungy colours to show that she isn't a pure person, and she will have make up on, for example: smokey black eyeliner and dark lipstick to showcase her non-conservative, somewhat unruly nature. Going by horror film codes and conventions she has done things that would get her killed, and that's what we are aiming to portray through this character; We don't want a final girl in our film opening, but someone that, in a cynical way, deserves death.
An example of this is in the opening of "Scream". Casey (Drew Barrymore) gets a call from an anonymous caller and despite having a boyfriend she gets flirtatious with the person on the other end, even lying and saying she doesn't have a boyfriend. This gives justification for her to be killed off, according to codes and conventions, and does eventually get killed by Ghostface in the opening.
However, this doesn't mean to say that our character is an 'ice maiden'. When she does get captured, she is genuinely terrified and really wants to stay alive. While she may appear like she hates everything and is a complete sadist who would want to rebell, not caring about the consequences she may face through her non-conservative attitude on the outside, she isn't on the inside. She just wants to get on with her life and do what she likes (which involves traits and characteristics that by horror convention must mean she will die) but by no means does she want her life to end.
In addition to the main first victim, we will also use another victim who has already met their demise because of the actions of the killers- this will be the same girl as seen in the missing poster during the flashback scene of the film opening. We will be displaying their corpse on screen as a way of showing the audience what dangerous situation the (alive) victim is now in.
Killers
To subvert from the traditional slasher use of one killer, we have decided to use two almost identical killers in our film opening. To follow the codes and conventions of slasher horror, both killers will be masked to some extent- we will have masks which we have made to look like patches of victims' skin sewn together which covers part of the face (as it will be the killers' work-in-progress), and they will both be wearing identical black clothing which includes a hoodie which will also work to mask the face. When we put framing focus onto the killers' faces, it will be clear that they are somewhat scarred in a certain way, which could link to their back stories and motives.
Alike certain slasher genre killers such as Halloween's Michael Myers, our antagonists will both be silent as we feel like it will add to the overall eeriness of the situation. This will also make the audience more curious as to what the identities of the killers are.
In addition, they will have simple handheld weapons; a knife and possibly a small axe will be used by them when they are killing their victims, making the situation more frightening as these are objects familiar to most of us.
EDIT: Once filming was complete, it wasn't completely clear that our opening involved two killers, so instead we have decided to recreate the storyboard so that the film opening only involved one killer, which still looks professionally filmed whilst editing, however it doesn't subvert much from the traditions of the slasher genre.
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