'Drag Me To Hell' Analysis: Opening 2 Minutes

In the beginning of the film, there is an establishing shot of the house, giving it a sense of importance within the film as it shows us where the main events of the film will happen. The close-ups of the facial expressions, specifically of the woman's showing worry and the young boy's showing distress and fear, make us focus more closely upon the overall genre of the film and increases the tension within the scene. The music in the very beginning is in a minor key, making it sound very mysterious. It is very sad sounding music with one single suspended note to create even more tension. When the necklace is unwrapped a fly comes out of it. The fly connotes to death as it whirs around the woman and the young boy, much the same as it would do of something that/someone who has died. This is used to foreshadow the death of one of the characters in the scene.

When the boy is laying on the floor, the panning around him and the stained glass on the ceiling creates a disorientating feeling for the audience. The hands within this creates a sense of chaos as if something disastrous is about to happen. The fast-paced nature of the editing is used throughout the scene to create a sense of chaos in the audiences' minds. It shows danger and turmoil within the house and makes us think that something bad is going to happen to one of the characters. The music in the beginning is quite soft compared to the demons that arise from hell. The demons are all very loud and booming in comparison to the soft music. This makes the audience fear them and sense danger around them.

In the scene the two main representations are of Mexicans and of Gypsies. They are both quite negative stereotypes of the cultures. The Mexican family is shown as being poor. The boy stole the necklace from the woman showing that the family don't have a lot of things. Their clothing and truck looked quite scrappy, showing they can't really afford much. The gypsy woman from whom the necklace was stolen is shown as sinister and evil as well as someone who can do magic, as she wouldn't take the necklace back and cursed the boy. The negative connotations of these groups as possibly to over-characterize the characters by using stereotypes because they are different. However, in the scene, the spiritualist woman is given prevalence through longer shot duration and more close-ups of her. 

Target Audience Analysis: Horror

Horror Films: The Top Ten Cliches

Horror movies are generally broken down into many different sub-genres. From slasher to zombie to mainstream and Asian horror, they all rely on cliches, that appear time after time in almost every horror film released, to gain popularity and continue the traditions of the genre. Cliches are considered an essential part of any good horror film and continue to draw people in. 

1. The ways in which small children and teenagers are viewed in horror films are quite particular. Small children are often seen as evil, with this cliche beginning in 'The Exorcist' and 'The Omen'. They can also be considered troubled or lonely who have evil invisible friends. You can usually hear the eerie humming of nursery rhymes and various other creepy soft music before someone gets killed. Teenagers, on the other hand, are seen as spoiled brats in most horror films. They are usually left home alone. They are usually the characters that people believe were meant to die and deserved the punishment they got. 

2. Horror films are almost always set in a rural area (where no one is around to hear you scream) or in remote deserted motels. These settings are used to create a mysterious desolation around the character. They generally use houses with basements and small cupboards etc. in order to create a space for the murder of one of the beloved characters, most commonly the prettiest girl in the group. 

3. The films also always contain a scene in which a woman washes her face and when she straightens up, sees a woman with half her face staring back at her in the mirror. When taking a bath, it will suddenly fill up with hair, blood or another cliche. Women are also always seen taking a shower in horror films. This bad idea stemmed from 'Psycho' and has been used constantly ever since. 

4. Another cliche is when someone of the living undead or living dead passes a window or a door yet no one sees them. Te audience can see the danger yet the main characters are too busy to notice. This happens a lot, along with surprise appearances from a recently murdered femme fatale and the surprise of many people having to sacrifice various limbs and ligaments.

5. In horror films, the audience knows that sleeping, rides from strangers, personal ads, getting into lifts and any kind of computer is a bad idea in all senses. The emergence of the deadly in always apparent in these areas yet the characters seem to know nothing of it until something extremely bad happens. 

6. Religion is contrasted in horror films. Religion is usually a comforting thing for many people but this totally changes in horror films. Priests are seen as well-meaning but highly incompetent, rabbis aren't featured much in horror films but nuns are to be avoided at all costs.

7. We see that homes and buildings are not as safe as we think. Buying a home is a bad idea as estate agents can never be trusted in horror films. Cheaper homes are usually the ones at which brutal murders have taken place. Looking at past or present security camera footage for any kind of supernatural being is not going to work as the dead don't show up on regular cameras. 

8. Medical operations are always a bad idea. A transplant could result in the eyes of a witch, heart of a cannibal and the kidneys of a murderer. 

9. Never go into a dark room alone. Along with lifts and computers, this is generally where someone comes to rip you apart or where the deadliest murder scenes are created.

10. Never answer the phone. It could result in something disastrous. 

An example of a cliched horror movie is 'The Ring'. The trailer is below. 

'Rachel Keller is a journalist investigating a videotape that may have killed four teenagers (including her niece). There is an urban legend about this tape: the viewer will die seven days after watching it. If the legend is correct, Rachel will have to run against time to save her son's and her own life.' (IMDb,Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

This film introduced Western culture to the horror film cliches so beloved today. It is based on a Japanese horror film from 1998, and remains the only American horror film that is scarier than the film its based on. 

It stars an attractive heroine who discovers a series of baffling deaths. The police dismiss these deaths as coincidences. She starts to get strange phone calls from the dead and becomes involved with an unhinged little girl with a mane of matted black hair. Her skeptical boyfriend is killed. She goes to an asylum too speak to the unresponsive witness of the original murder. 

Water begins seeping from the bathroom door; a girl is left to die by her friends and family (and comes back for revenge); choppy, time-lapse camera work enables the dead girl to cover crazy distances in short periods of time; and two surprise twists shock us at the end.

'Divergent' Analysis: Opening 5 Minutes

We can infer that Divergent is a science-fiction film and is almost certainly set in the future. It tells us that the city is Chicago, yet is completely different to what it is now, with a fence around its edges. As we pan down into the city, we hear a narrative - from what we can only assume is the main character - about the city itself and the people in it. We hear about the factions which is also something that doesn't happen in our time now, indicating that it may be set in the future. This causes us to question what the city is actually like and if it is indeed what the future could have in store for us. 

We find out that the public have been split based on who they are and their characteristics as a person. We understand that the factions all mean different things yet we have an inkling that something horrible is going to happen to the almost too harmonious city. We see that everyone has a place and must follow the rules to keep the harmony so as not to create another 'war'. People seem afraid of the incident that wiped the rest of the planet away years before and this seems to keep everyone in line in their respective factions.

At the beginning, we hear very dramatic music used as they pan over the city with a bird's eye view. This creates an ominous and curious mood as we don't know if this place is good or bad. When we pan down towards the people, the music suddenly stops and changes to softer music as we watch the people wander around the town and the main character starts to narrate and tell us of her life.

There are many uses of establishing shots of the city. These are effective as it gives us a sense of location and what the overall city looks like. It makes us question why it looks like that and why there is a fence etc. We also get a few medium shots which show the different factions. These are also effective as it shows us how different they all look from each other and how their clothes reflect the jobs and factions they have been placed into. This helps us to differentiate the people and see where they maybe wouldn't fit in. 

'Back To The Future' Analysis: Opening 5 Minutes

(VIDEO ABOVE MISSES OUT LAST PART OF THE OPENING)
(VIDEO BELOW IS MY SPOKEN ANALYSIS OF THE OPENING)

In any opening of a film, we expect to be wowed and for it to engage us. We expect to be introduced very briefly to the characters and to understand the time and setting without it giving too much away about the rest of the film.

A lot of the things you find out in the opening of Back to the Future are inferences that you can make from the abundance of minor details littered throughout the first 5 minutes.

We can initially infer that time is a heavy feature of the film due to the clocks ticking and eventually finding out that Doc set them 25 minutes early. Our original question, as with any film, is ‘who are these people’ but this, in particular, also makes us question ‘why has he done this’, and ‘what does he want to achieve’. It also makes us question how he knew Marty was going to be in his house at the exact time at which he phoned. It creates a sense of confusion and the unknown in the chaotic mess of his home. The clothing, the radio and the other various electronics show us that it is not in our time, 1985 to be exact.

We find out that Marty, and Doc, are the main characters. We can only see Marty and so know that he is quite young and still in school. The way he turns everything on etc. makes him seem slightly irresponsible without a care in the world. However, this also tells us that he may be quite familiar with the house (as shown from him opening the door with the spare key under the mat). However, we don’t see Marty’s face until the medium shot when he plays the guitar and damages the amp. Before this we have a sense of intrigue as the close-ups make us question who this is and what he looks like, all we see are his feet.

The abundance of ambient noise, with the clocks ticking, the radio and the news station on, we find out various bits of information as we pan around the room. We also get minor details from the close-ups of newspaper clippings and things up on the wall. This helps us to try to understand the context of the film. For example, when we see the case of plutonium, it makes us question the characters, as we initially hear it has been stolen by terrorists.

The opening creates many questions, but doesn’t answer very many of them unless you are looking very carefully for certain things. There isn’t really any kind of establishing shot, but the radio and TV make up for this by setting the scene with little details. We also don’t find out much about the story or the characters, only what we can infer. This makes us more intrigued to continue watching the film. The phone call telling Marty to go to the mall in the middle of the night intrigues us also as we want to know what the mysterious man, we haven’t yet come across, has to show Marty in his ‘breakthrough’.

Analysis Feedback

Well done Niamh, a confident start to your blog page and some interesting comments on the effects of the opening. Having now learnt further terminology to apply to openings, can you add some comments to the post below about the use of camera and how it makes the audience think or feel?  Aim to comment on three significant moments involving camera to improve your response.

'28 Weeks Later' Analysis: Opening 2 Minutes

In the beginning of the film, we find a group of people hiding away in a secluded house. The secluded nature tells us that the people want to be far away from any other people and feel the need to be on their own in the safety of each other. We see that the group of people are highly reliant on each other to keep them safe as they are all in the same boat. Don (Robert Carlyle), obviously considered the leader of the group in the hideout and the protagonist of the film, is reluctant to let the child (Beans El-Balawi) into his hideout. This shows us that he is quite a paranoid and disinclined man and he lets these thoughts cloud his emotions and his overall judgement later in the opening scene. We see that his wife, Alice (Catherine McCormack), is the polar opposite. She protects the young boy, who she doesn't even know, without batting an eyelid. This shows her emotion driven mind - a contrast to Don's instinct driven mind. In both characters, their mindsets were their downfall, even in the first 2 minutes. Alice gets caught when barricading herself in a room to protect someone other than herself whilst Don leaves his loved ones and the destruction behind to protect himself. 

As well as learning the basics about the characters, we get a glimpse of what horrors lie in the rest of the film. It begins by showing us the fear people have about the virus and the paranoia that comes with it. It focuses on the virus' power and the lengths the characters will have to go to to survive against the frenzied people. We can see that the virus spreads extremely quickly after being bitten, turning people into deranged monsters almost instantaneously. It also shows us that it is a physically transmitted infection through a bite or a scratch and is not airborne, making it seem to be a more intense and graphic film as we imagine the struggles the people before have had to deal with and witness.

*added after feedback*

After learning all about shot types and effects of these, I am more prepared to start to fully analyse the opening by looking at the actual filming process. You have the establishing shots of the wooden house, and later the shots of the fields surrounding, to give us a sense of where the film is originally set. Once the havoc begins, the camera is quite shaky giving it more accurate and realistic footage as if it was someones point of view. I like this as it helps to reiterate the theme of danger and the situation they are in. 

This first shot, of Don leaving the house through the window, is one of my favourites in the opening scene. This is a high-angled shot showing him as weaker and showing the disease as being stronger than him. It does this by making him look smaller, whereas in the shots with the infected in, they are head on.

This second shot is also one of my favourites. The long shot of Alice being dragged away by the infected is very dramatic. The house almost seems to frame the window so we don't see anything else in the shot, making us focus on her more intently even though it's not a direct close-up.

The third shot I picked is this one whilst Don is running away. The way that it is a close-up of Don but also sort of a long shot of the people in the background make it quite interesting. We focus more closely on the close-up as you can see the fear and determination on his face, which further indicates the danger in the scene. I like the way the people in the background are still there yet blurred out. This makes the audience focus on Don and if he will get away rather than the infected. It helps people to realise who the protagonist is and who the rest of the film will focus on.

I really like this shot. It shows the only bond he has left, broken, as the infected take yet another person Don cares about. Again, the shaky nature helps us to see the havoc caused and the panic ensued by the infected but the close-up helps us to see the emotion and friendship in a time of danger and disease. The low-angle shows the power and strength in the bond but maybe also, the dominance of Don in the film. 

Influences and Interests: Getting to Know Me

MY FAVOURITE FILM

I am not the kind of person to ever pick favourites of anything. I'm just too indecisive. Films are even worse as they're all so different and of so many different genres that its hard to narrow it down to just one, though I do have some films that I will always go back to and re-watch. These include... '10 Things I Hate About You', 'She's All That', 'Clueless', 'Hitch', 'Star Wars', 'Harry Potter', 'Aladdin', 'Cars' and so many more. 

MY FAVOURITE FILM GENRE

My favourite film genre varies depending on what type of mood I'm in and what type of film I want to watch. After trawling SkyMovies for a while, I usually end up choosing a cheesy rom-com, an amusing comedy or a Disney classic. I like these because they are all such feel-good films that you can't help but love and re-watch time and time again (even if they are a bit rubbish). I also enjoy watching action/adventure/fantasy films with my family as they give you a sense of adrenaline and excitement from the comfort of your living room sofa without having to lift a finger - except to grab the popcorn, of course. I enjoy the heartwarming nature of a rom-com and a Disney film but on the other hand I enjoy the uncertainty that comes from an action/adventure film. 

ANTICIPATED FILM RELEASES

   

There are many films that I am looking forward to being released in the next couple of months. Specifically, I am looking forward to 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children', 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them', 'The Girl on the Train' and 'Doctor Strange'.

THE LAST FILM I SAW

The last film I saw, was 'Finding Dory' at the cinema. I enjoyed this film lots as it kept the same well-known loveable characters and revisited everything I (and I’m sure many others) loved about 'Finding Nemo'. It followed a similar storyline in the same heart-warming way that the first one was, yet it was totally different. It would definitely be something I would go and see again and I would definitely recommend it to anyone else who is looking to relive a bit of their childhood.