I have decided to analyse the first 12 minutes of Scream, which was Horror film that was about a masked killer who enjoys tormenting his victims with phone calls and movie references. The killer's main target is Sidney, a teenage girl whose mother Maureen fell victim to a brutal murder one year earlier. The film takes on a "whodunit" mystery, with many of her friends and people from her town being fellow targets and suspects. Scream revitalized the “slasher” film genre in the late 1990s, similar to the impact Halloween (1978) had on late 1970s film, by using a horror style storyline with added humour as well. At the very start of ‘Scream’ you immediately realise it is a psychological horror. ‘Scream’ is aimed at an 18 audience and above because not only does it contain strong language and violence but it contains scenes of a gruesome nature that could cause distress to some people. Scream is quite similar to our film because it is a psychological horror and features a masked stalker character.film starts with opening title of Scream coming in with the noise of at first a thud, blended with the noise of a telephone and finally into a scream which then blends back to a telephone ringing. The titles then shot towards the screen and fades to the scene where Casey hears the phone ringing. The titles create some suspense at the beginning because of the changes of sound it builds up then the sudden change of sound to the normal noises of a room makes you suddenly jump. It then cuts to a close up of the telephone that is ringing and Casey the female character goes to answer it. The editing is normal in this section as it appears to be quite a “normal” situation. The conversation continues, but the audience soon realises that Casey doesn’t know the mysterious caller and the situation is not going well. The use of a canted angle shots whilst Casey is on the phone suggests hat something is not right. When Casey puts the phone down to continue her tasks, which are filmed using a dolly shot the phone rings again and Casey is drawn into a conversation with the mysterious caller. When Casey puts the phone down again, the Director uses an establishing shot of the house which sets the scene and shows where the character is. The shot also shows Casey’s isolation because the house is miles away from anywhere and the audience becomes the person looking in like a point of view.
Soon Casey realises the mysterious guy is much more sincere when he says “I wanna know who I’m looking at!” the voice of the speaker is slightly strange, it could be described as a voice changing as it sounds computerized in some ways. From this sentence we Casey realising she is being watched. The editing picks up pace as Casey locks all the doors, looks out of the window, walks into the other and suddenly the non-diegetic music stops and the door bell rings. This scares both the audience and Casey because the noise it unexpected and tension has been built up. The Mise-en-scene in Scream creates the image of a normal American House that can be linked to the year of release which was 1996, so Casey’s clothes link with this time period.
The Mise En Scene also shows a horror element in the film an example of this is when Casey is playing with the knife whilst on the phone creating a horror element, she mentions another horror movie where the killer used a kitchen knife as the murder weapon, and this shows us some dramatic irony.
From this point onwards Casey begins to panic as the caller threatens to kill her, to create more suspense we then find out that Casey has lied to the caller and does have a boyfriend which the caller identifies and tells Casey to turn on the lights of her back patio. At this point we get a point of view shot from Casey to convey what she is seeing, Steve her boyfriend is tied up on the back patio and the caller says to save his life she must answer movie trivia. The use of a close-up which shows Casey opening the door adds tension, because the audience can’t see what’s happening outside.
After killing Steve because Casey answered a question incorrectly the caller torments her. A chair is thrown through a window first, which again makes the audience jump. Then we see a medium shot of Casey looking around the house, then a point-of-view shot from Casey looking around and finally we see Scream. In a medium long shot, he is dressed in a black costume with a white ghost mask over his face. In this scene the use of non-diegetic sound is used to create tension which again puts the audience on edge.
The masked character then chases Casey across the lawn while she screams (a stereotypically feature of a women) just as her parents pull up into her driveway. They do not see her, but the audience gets an close-up of Casey’s face in a canted angle which again shows something is not right. Casey in this stabbed in chest and left unable to scream. We then see her parents looking around the house for Casey, the house is a mess and smoke fills the air this results in her parents frantically looking for her. The editing picks up pace and her mother runs outside. A sudden scream and Casey’s father appears to see the problem. The camera zooms into their faces and the audience is left wondering what it going on. A point-of-view shot reveals Casey hung from a tree in the backyard. The shot at first in a long establishing shot which zooms in to Casey’s face, the editing in this section is quite accelerated.
Scream links in with our film quite a lot, the main similarities are the use of a mask to hide a person’s real appearance. Also the use of fast editing can be linked with our film, because when we film our scene with the stalker standing above our main characters bed we want to accelerate the pace in which she gets up. This film does differ from our film as well, because we don’t want to show any bloodshed in the first two minute as we want to convey a psychological threat at first rather than a physical threat. This film will serve quite well as inspiration for our film because the conventions used in this film can be applied to our own; this should then create quite an effective psychological horror film.
Soon Casey realises the mysterious guy is much more sincere when he says “I wanna know who I’m looking at!” the voice of the speaker is slightly strange, it could be described as a voice changing as it sounds computerized in some ways. From this sentence we Casey realising she is being watched. The editing picks up pace as Casey locks all the doors, looks out of the window, walks into the other and suddenly the non-diegetic music stops and the door bell rings. This scares both the audience and Casey because the noise it unexpected and tension has been built up. The Mise-en-scene in Scream creates the image of a normal American House that can be linked to the year of release which was 1996, so Casey’s clothes link with this time period.
The Mise En Scene also shows a horror element in the film an example of this is when Casey is playing with the knife whilst on the phone creating a horror element, she mentions another horror movie where the killer used a kitchen knife as the murder weapon, and this shows us some dramatic irony.
From this point onwards Casey begins to panic as the caller threatens to kill her, to create more suspense we then find out that Casey has lied to the caller and does have a boyfriend which the caller identifies and tells Casey to turn on the lights of her back patio. At this point we get a point of view shot from Casey to convey what she is seeing, Steve her boyfriend is tied up on the back patio and the caller says to save his life she must answer movie trivia. The use of a close-up which shows Casey opening the door adds tension, because the audience can’t see what’s happening outside.
After killing Steve because Casey answered a question incorrectly the caller torments her. A chair is thrown through a window first, which again makes the audience jump. Then we see a medium shot of Casey looking around the house, then a point-of-view shot from Casey looking around and finally we see Scream. In a medium long shot, he is dressed in a black costume with a white ghost mask over his face. In this scene the use of non-diegetic sound is used to create tension which again puts the audience on edge.
The masked character then chases Casey across the lawn while she screams (a stereotypically feature of a women) just as her parents pull up into her driveway. They do not see her, but the audience gets an close-up of Casey’s face in a canted angle which again shows something is not right. Casey in this stabbed in chest and left unable to scream. We then see her parents looking around the house for Casey, the house is a mess and smoke fills the air this results in her parents frantically looking for her. The editing picks up pace and her mother runs outside. A sudden scream and Casey’s father appears to see the problem. The camera zooms into their faces and the audience is left wondering what it going on. A point-of-view shot reveals Casey hung from a tree in the backyard. The shot at first in a long establishing shot which zooms in to Casey’s face, the editing in this section is quite accelerated.
Scream links in with our film quite a lot, the main similarities are the use of a mask to hide a person’s real appearance. Also the use of fast editing can be linked with our film, because when we film our scene with the stalker standing above our main characters bed we want to accelerate the pace in which she gets up. This film does differ from our film as well, because we don’t want to show any bloodshed in the first two minute as we want to convey a psychological threat at first rather than a physical threat. This film will serve quite well as inspiration for our film because the conventions used in this film can be applied to our own; this should then create quite an effective psychological horror film.
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