Scream - Opening Analysis

Scream

Scream is a movie which is about a murderer who kills people in different kind of ways. He dresses up in a black cloak and a ghost mask to make his victims scared. He has different ways of killing people like phoning people up and scaring them.

Character

There are 2 main characters in the beginning of the scene, the murderer and the women. In this scene you don't see the actual murderer you can only hear his voice, but you can tell what  personality he has by the way he speaks. The murderer sounds like he is an evil person he tries to make the women feel comfortable talking to him by flirting with her, for example they talk about there favorite scary movie, this is a good way to start a conversation with a person and make them feel comfortable. When the murderer talks to her and brings up the conversation about scary movies, this shows the audience that it is going to get bad further on in the film and something is going to happen to the girl. He also does trick her into thinking that he is into her for example he says "Do you have a boyfriend?" which tricks her into thinking that he is trying to ask her out on a date. After she says "Why, are you going to ask me out on a date?" this shows that she is tricked by his questions. This then leads on to him saying " I wanna know who im looking at!" This should shock people at the time because they don't expect the person to say that and that should scare people. This is a good example of a scary film which doesn't scare you by jump scares, it scares you by listening to the conservation. The women is represented as a weak character who gets scared really easy, she is also represented as a gullible and flirty person, who will talk to anyone. She also seems like she is a very popular person at school because she wears clothes which are very popular back then. Also she looks like she is from a wealthy family because she has a fairly big house.

Sound

The sound which is used in the scene is mainly diegetic sound which is mainly talking from the characters. Having diegetic sound and no music is very different to most horror movies because usually when something is trying to be scary, music which starts of small will come on for example one continuous note of a violin which makes the scene get more intense. In this film things get more intense with characters talking to each other, you can tell that it is happening because the murderer starts talking about more weirder subjects like scary movies and whether she has a boyfriend or not, things get more intense until she realizes she is being watched, which changes the situation completely. The non-diegetic sound doesn't start playing until the scene gets very intense and more scary, this is when she is running around the house locking all of the doors around the house, This also makes the atmosphere more scary and intense because the murderer is also talking while the menacing music is playing which more intense and should build up more of an adrenaline rush for the audience.

Camera Angle

The Camera angles used in the scene are used very well and make the scene look a lot scarier for the audience. A close up is used to show the characters expressions when she is scared of the murderer saying "I wanna know who im talking to!" This is brings more of a scarier atmosphere into the shot because it shows the terror of the women's face. An establishing shot is used to show the setting of the shot. For example at the beginning of the scene you can see a shot of the house of where the girl lives, this is shown to be a big house and she might be from a wealthy family. The house is also in the middle of no-where so it looks more scary because if someone is attacked and no-one calls the police nobody is going to come and save them which makes it a lot more scarier. A tracking shot is used when following the girl through the corridor while flirting with the murderer, this makes the audience feel like she is enjoying talking to the murderer but she doesn't know and the makes the audience nervous or scared that murderer is going to jump out at her.

Mise-En-Scene

In this scene you don't see the actual murderer you can only hear his voice, this makes it more scarier because no-one knows where the murderer is at the time and this can make the audience scared and nervous. The girl is wearing clothes which are very popular at the time, so she could be considered popular at her school, also she has a big house so it could be that she is from a wealthy family. They also use good props in the shot, for example the popcorn, when the popcorn is on the oven hob it looks like it is a timer, a timer which could be used to count down the amount of time the girl has until she dies. The knife that she is playing with while talking on the phone could represent the weapon of the murderer, this could make people more scared and unprepared for hat is coming.