DW: Evaluation Part 1

• The film opening is about a teenage boy who comes home late one afternoon to find his parents have gone out. He goes about his usual activities until realising he is not alone and is being observed by a masked intruder, which the audience also come to realise. The opening ends with a final sudden shot exposing the masked man.

My film opening is somewhat conventional of a real horror film. It uses a tense and ambient soundtrack to give a sense of mystery and uneasiness, common in the horror genre. The use of diagetic sound such as the bike passing over gravel, the TV with no signal etc. is clear and adds verisimilitude. This is added to by the non-diagteic sound of the intruder breathing – you would not expect to hear this sound and therefore helps frighten the audience and add to enigma. This type of both diagetic and non diagetic sound is often heard in horror movies for example The Strangers (Bertino 2008) which uses diagetic sound heavily in the opening sequence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWp14gtZ-u0 The strangers opening

• The plot is also conventional; it uses isolation of a young boy as well as a sinister masked attacker, accompanied with the eerie music and slow paced transition editing, this concept is very similar to When A Stranger Calls (West 2006) however this could be seen as challenging the codes and conventions of a horror as the lone protagonist is male.
• The font used for the titles is old and rustic, juxtaposing the somewhat modern feel of the opening, this may confuse audience slightly. The editing pace builds as the opening continues, the transitions start off slow and calm, but towards the end the cutting rate becomes faster – to display shock and perhaps fright, common in opening sequences of horror movies for example Dawn Of The Dead (Snyder 2004). The opening uses a mix of continuity editing and montage edits to convey a relaxed and unaware mind state of the boy, and also to convey passing of time.

Location and mise-en-scene of a large, relatively modern house allows the audience to relate to the character as he is in familiar surroundings – audience positioning. Costume and props are quite irrelevant in this opening however we feel the phone helps construct enigma. The fact that we see very little of the intruder also creates enigma (see Ils/Them Moreau 2006) the audience are not sure what will happen to the boy or why the masked man is there etc. which, in a real film you would find out after the opening.

The opening includes a wide variety of camera techniques and angles, some of which are iconic of horror films for example the POV and handicam shots used as the vision of the antagonist. This can also be seen in many horror movies such as Halloween (Carpenter 1978). We used this technique to show the audience that the protagonist is not alone hence conforming to traditional horror movies. However we also used some shots that perhaps aren't so common in horrors, for example a birds eye view shot, we did this to make the opening slightly different and unique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxRGw0l-b18  Halloween 1978 opening