Coursework

The scream opening begins with an animated text sequence of the film’s title, the text is stretched and warped into position with the sound of a door slamming and a shotgun shooting. These sounds are synced with the on screen animation, peaking when the text comes into a complete form. This emphasizes what we are seeing visually on screen in order to set the mood and feel of the entire movie. The sounds are also mixed with screaming which then warps into the sound of the phone ringing. This gives us a way to seamlessly cut from the titles straight into the film. As the sound carries on from the animation sequence into the actual scene, this i believe is called an L cut.

We're then shown a girl answering the phone to a man who she believes has the wrong number; she promptly ends the call to carry on what she was doing. The phone then rings again and the camera begins to track in and tilt slightly to the left as the girl realizes something odd is happening. I believe this has been used to draw attention as it gives a slightly unnatural look to the shot.

The first sequence plays heavily on the outside as that is where the imminent danger actually is. Outside the camera begins to pan down from a tree. The mood is very calm yet quite edgy here as anything threatening is yet to happen. We see a dark and scary looking tree which looks quite like a hand reaching over the house suggesting that something dark and evil from the outside is trying to reach in, or controlling the house. The cut away to the outside also suggests a sense of time passing.

Back inside the house the girl is now cooking popcorn whilst talking to the stranger on the phone, the conversation is flowing smoothly and the characters seem to be flirting with one another. The guy then asks what her favourite movie is. She tells him Halloween whilst grabbing a knife which creates the iconic swooshing sound as it is pulled out from the stand. Notice also that the girl mentions Halloween which is also another slasher horror which further helps to establish the genre of this film and possibly hinting at the fate of

Whilst her conversation continues she's now walking around her house, we have a element of structuralism which is when a combination of shots that placed together allow the viewer to perceive new ideas from the scene which may conspire to a completely different take on the scene altogether or to further support already existing themes. This is generated through the use of the popcorn which is cut back to during her phone conversation; this gives us the impression that something is going to happen. There's no need for us to go back to the popcorn but it's inclusion suggests something is building up as its size increases every time we cut back to it. Also when we first cut back to the popcorn its sound is much quieter which coincides with how the conversation is going at the time. We next see the popcorn generating loud crackling noises because it's probably burning, the conversation starts to get a little heated and serious. It's somewhat similar to older movies where a boiling kettle is used to symbolize danger as it gets closer and closer to creating that loud whistling sound.

The entire sequence is completely calm until the caller slips up and mentions that he "wants to know who he is looking at" this immediately draws upon a subtle soundtrack to play just after she realized what the caller had said. This is commonly used to draw drama into the scene and amplify what has happened. It also grabs the viewers’ attention if they had missed what was said. When this sound is heard the camera is also used to draw in attention and the shot turns from a mid-shot to a close up in just a few seconds. This allows us to see her expressions and grab an understanding of how she feels about what she heard.  Here on after a soundtrack is constantly present. This is also where in the conversation that we see the burning popcorn in a sense everything is slowly falling apart.

The girl resumes control of the scene and calmly returns to the kitchen after shouting at the caller. It’s not until she returns to the kitchen that she sees her popcorn is ruined, this allows the viewers and character to experience the same realization except the viewer’s already knew through cutaways. Again the phone rings and the man is now shouting very loud, threatening the girl. The camera tracks into her face as this time she is much more scared. So throughout the entire scene we see everything has eventually degraded and fell apart over time. With the popcorn becoming burnt, the conversation taking a darker turn everything has completely been ruined, we the viewer’s know that and so does the girl on screen. With all levels of foreshadowing being spent the viewer given a clear picture that something horrible is going to happen.

The girl is now running around scampering to lock all the doors and “save herself" all of which happens whilst a small segment of uplifting music can be heard, this suggests that she may actually make it out okay. She then runs to a door and locks it to prevent anything from getting her. The windows also look like prison bars entrapping her in the house. The index of this shot are just window bars, however it's indexical meaning are prison bars.

Overall the first scene uses a mixture of symbiotic techniques to portray an almost iconic style horror movie with clear references to older techniques which we are familiar with. However the movie seems to stray away from these typical features and replaces them with incredibly similar but different features of it's own.