Film opening analysis and deconstruction

The opening scene that as a group Gaia, Ami and I created, is suited to the horror genre, with all areas of Mis en Scene, Cinematography, Editing and Sound being applied appropriately to the theme when necessary.

Through analysing our final product I feel that we achieved a very good outcome. From the preliminary experiment, I felt that as a group we have made a lot of progress, not only visually, but also to the way in which we know how to apply ourselves, with a set theme and standard of a horror theme to maintain. The way in which we had even planned had developed hugely, with ideas being a lot more created and experimental seeing as we had a lot of time to make a very good product.

We strongly applied Mis en scene to our opening scene. The idea behind horror is that it is meant to play with your fears and create an effect of the audience being scared or uncomfortable. A lot of the time it is the small things that count and it is actually hard to pick out features that help to drastically change a scene from being cheerful to being dark, gloomy, and eerie to fit the horror scene. The location of a garage and lack of other people being shown shows that the girls are very isolated and hidden.


Lighting

Taking this into consideration, we decided that on of the main things that would help to make sure that everything fitted into the theme would be the lighting. Horror themes often, have a stereotypically dark setting, whether outside in a dark forest, or inside a dimly lit house. This helps the audience to feel on edge and slightly frightened as the dark is a popular worry amongst a lot of people. We shot our opening scene mainly in a garage and this had two big windows to one of the sides meaning that a lot of light often was shining through. To solve this, we put one big plank of wood over one of the lower ones and with the larger and higher window he held wood up to ensure that minimum light was picked up. We used a slightly tinted yellow light in order to cause shadows as an effective addition which we felt worked as we did not over do it and kept it very limited.

Props that we used all related to the stereotypical theme of horror some being less common than others as it linked to our narrative such as a kidney dish and fake blood (the colour red represents danger, but also the danger that someone is hurt), plyers (what supposedly removed he girls teeth), and additional props such as screws, smaller plyers, books and skeletons.


Makeup

Facial features such as the makeup that we added to the girls faces portrayed being abused as there were bruises everywhere. The use of the different eye shadows layered well helped the over all opening scene to create a dark mood and atmosphere and no one is actually sure of the situation that the girls are in. The models hair is scraped back completely as she is fully bandaged up which also is another use of simple props that are very effective.


Angles

In Cinematography, the use of angles we felt were effective as we used a lot of close ups to show expressions on the girls faces but also on some of the objects to add a narrative that the audience could try and piece together. We took a few POV shots, as if it was the vision of the man that was behind the mask to show his way of thinking and what he could see. We tried to ensue that all of the shots that were taken in focus because some of the smaller details needed to be seen.


Fake blood

As a group we felt that the scene of the blood dripping of the shovel was very effective and we changed it to slow motion to create more tension and suspense which in the end we felt worked very successfully.


POV shot

We decided that for the POV shots we would do them as handheld shots, as if we were the antagonist. He also visually, looks like he is walking so by using a handheld shot it made it look slightly unstable but it fitted well.


Rule of thirds

We decided instead of using the rule of thirds, we kept the model in the middle of the screen when screaming to ensue she was not portrayed as the dominant character and instead us vey vulnerable and is shown as being victimised. When the girl is screaming there is a zoom, leading away from the protagonist to show that she is stuck and has been tied to a chair.


Montage/ continuity

The majority of our opening scene is a montage, which consisted of a variation of shot that were all edited together to show a passing time and different scenes all in one. Therefor, it was hard to say that there was a lot of continuity, but it was more focusing on areas such as the fact the props, layout and the appearance of the girls needed to be he same every time that we were shooting.


Dissolve

Other editing that we did, was using a dissolve method in which one scene would fade and the next one would lead on until that shot was fully on the scene.

A long take of the girls in the POV shot meant that there was an element of time fully focused on them for the audience to take in their situation.


Filters

As a group we used a lot of different filters to change the darkness and sharpness of the different shots which helped the continuity to make it look as if they were all from the same story.


Sound

For the sound, we felt that this all worked successfully. We gathered smaller sound effects and non diegetic effects that would be harder to create such as a heart beat from a machine online, but the majority of the sound such as the lullaby and the humming we created our selves and this was parallel sound as it complimented what was being shown on the screen. Overall, we felt that it fitted quite well and that it was effective and added to the creepy atmosphere. We did not have any dialogue so the sound effects and lullaby helped to balance out the negative sound.

A very short sound bridge was used right at the end, when leading into the forest scene and linked with screaming as we felt this was a good way of finishing the opening.

However, we did feel that some areas could be improved upon. To ensure that the lullaby, was as good as it could be, we would re record and make sure that all of the girls knew exactly how the words were pieced together and some of them went slightly higher than the other or made words plural and others singular.

Although we created a montage, two of the different scenes used gloves and in both they were different. The fluency of the montage was not broken however, to the audience they may see it as strange that there are two different colours.