Opening of a Thriller film - The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project is a completely different type of thriller compared to Black Swan. The whole film is filmed with a hand held camera and from each characters point-of-view which makes the film appear more realistic and believable to the audience. Whereas Black Swan is clearly a high budget thriller film which is focused around one character and is more of a psychological thriller.

The film begins with the opening credits rolling without any music in the background apart from the sound of a camera filming. This sound alone already helps to create a tense atmosphere. The distributor, Artisan Entertainment appears on the screen first however the titles are being shown to be moving and shaking as if they were being filmed themselves. The producer, Haxan Films then appears on the screen followed by the films title, The Blair Witch Project which is in a fairly small font which is towards the left of the screen. What follows is a short paragraph hinting about what the film is about.
This reads,
"In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland whilst shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found."
This is effective as a narrator has not been used so the audience have time to think about what is about to unfold.

The first scene is set in one of the students houses. One of the characters is using a hand held camera and starts to film and makes a close up of one of the other characters faces. This shot is blurred and not held steadily so the audience can tell it is from his point of view and that this character doesn't really know how to use the camera as he continues to change the focus and zoom. The main female character then appears to have the camera where she uses a close up to focus on the books she has which appear to be about the forest they are going to and peoples previous experiences in the forest. There then appears to be cross cuts when more characters arrive at the scene to show that a lot is going on and being prepared before they set off to the forest. Even though the opening to this film doesn't create as much tension as other thriller films at the beginning, it still makes the audience want to watch it as they want to know what is going to happen to the students due to the earlier paragraph they saw on the screen which makes it seem like a mystery.