I've analysed the opening of An American Haunting. A horror film about a possession, a convention of some types of horror movies.
The first thing we see is some text written in red. This connotes the idea of blood and death. It is a popular convention used in most horror films and is easily recognized by the audience to show to them this film is a horror. The music played during these opening credits is almost silent but then goes very high pitch and screechy, which would scare people as it is a gradual increase of the tempo of the music causes peoples heart to increase with fright.
A denotation of a wooded area covered in snow and with an old grand house in the background is the first image we see after the opening titles. This setting looks very innocent however the idea of winter (snow) can connote to symbolize death as during winter, living trees and flowers all die. This sets the idea that this movie is about death.
Suddenly a girl is seen looking panicked and running through the trees, also she is running away from something. This connotes to the idea of the damsel in distress type character. She is scared and running away from an unknown entity and this is shown through her fast movements and heavy breathing. Long shots and P.O.V (Point of view) shots are used to show how distressed she is and how much she is panicking. The audience is not shown what she is running away from which adds to the idea of fearing the unknown.
Close ups are used on the door handles when the girl tries to open the door and when the unknown thing tries to enter her bedroom. This connotes to show the tension in the air and adds to the scary atmosphere being created by not knowing what she is running from. P.O.V is used as to show what the girl is seeing, it is used especially as she runs to give a shaky effect to the scene. The girl finds a letter knife which is another convention of the horror genre as knives are usually associated with death and murder. Finally the audience gets to see what the girl was scared of- a dead girl which is shown for less then 3 seconds. The dead girl has black hair and is deathly pale which adds to her creepy nature and horrific look.
Another iconography of horror films are children's dolls. In this movie a creepy doll with a large crack in its face is used. This connotes to show how distort life is and in this movie has an even greater significance as the doll represents innocent but due to reasons explained in the movie this innocent is broken just like the dolls face. Another denotation shown is the mother character drinking vodka and looking at a photograph of her daughter and ex-husband. This suggests that she is unstable and much like the doll she is tore apart by her divorce in this case.
The mother finds and reads some old letters written in the 1800's warning whoever is reading about an dangerous entity and that reading these letters could save your life. The letters are read by a male voice over which sets the scene for rest of the movie.
This movie would be a good influence for my movie because it has lots of conventions of horror films which I could make my movie ( if i decide to make a horror film opening). It includes lots of different camera shots and movements such as P.O.V and high angle shots that I could also use in my movie to make a fast paced scene more dramatic. This movie however wouldn't be a good influence though because it seems too "corny"- the story line seems very 'been there done that'.
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