Tuesday, 3 December 2013

LP : The Women in Black Opening Scene:


Genre:
The sub-genre of The Women in Black is supernatural because it centres on a ghost of a woman who has the power to make children kill themselves. She believes that none of the adults in the village she lives deserve to have children because her son drowned in the marshes at a very young age. Supernatural films often create a lot of suspense throughout the film, and the women in black does just this. It is a film that makes you jump and the audience is in an almost constant state of anticipation. The plot in The Women in Black contains a mysterious event that has happened in the past to the ghost and the lead character (Daniel Radcliff) is on a quest to find out the truth. Supernatural horrors are quite often set in a familiar location, such as a home to create a recognisable fear for the audience, the Women in Black mainly takes place in a house and the beginning sequence shows three little girls playing with dolls inside their bedroom.
Form and Style of Opening:
The director has used a slightly slow motion effect too enforce the idea of fear and to create the tension, especially when the girls are walking over to the window. The audience may have an idea of what they are about to do, but the slow motion effect gives time for questions to be asked, for example what is controlling them to do this? It can be understood that something is killing these children because it shows the shadow of a dark women in a netted hat at the end on the corner of the screen, so it can just be noticed. This creates a sense of foreboding because we want to know who this woman is and we know she will be back. The title of the film straight away give an image that the main ghost is going to be a creepy women, and the word ‘Black’ straight away portrays a sense of fear.
 Film language- telling the story:
Mise-en-scene: Props are provided to create a stereotypical view of children playing with their dolls. Children’s toys can often be seen as scary often because they bring back old child hood memory of being scared of toys because of children’s wild imaginations, especially dolls are seen to be spooky. In the opening the dolls are used to create this recognizable fear for the audience, it is very conventional to supernatural-horror. Non-verbal language allows the audience to see something is not quite right because of the contrast between the girls playing with their dolls and smiling and their serious facial expressions when they see the women.
Camera: The establishing shot shows a close up of a teapot being poured into a teacup, there is nothing coming out of the teapot immediately allowing the audience to recognize that it is imaginary and that it’s children pouring this imaginary tea. The camera stays very still throughout the clip placing the audience with the idea of death. The stillness also allows us to focus on the children who are the main center rolls of the first scene because of what’s going to happen to them.
Editing: A continuity shot is shown of a hand dropping the china mug and then the next shot is it smashing on the floor, allowing the audience to know that it was one of the little girls. Also it’s a contrast between them taking care of their stuff and having fun with it and then smashing it up, it’s as if a strong power is controlling them to do it, it is out of their control. The clip is very synchronized, placing us with the supernatural feeling of something unnatural controlling them, which also adds a quality of psychological horror. An example of a synchronized shot is when the three little girls jump out of the walk over to the window, open it and jump out at exactly same time.
Sound: The music used throughout the whole opening is very chilling, the sound is a similar effect to a music box which is parallel to the little children because they in the past children have used music boxes to allow them to settle down. It also get’s louder throughout until the girls jump out the window, this creates tension for the audience. Dialogue is used to show the fear and unhappiness of the children’s mother when they jump out of the window, she shouts “my babies” allowing us to see she’s sad but also implying to the fact they are her children. Also the scream from the women is very conventional of horror, portraying fright.
Narrative
Representation and Ideologies
It shows upper class girls dressed in rich Victorian clothes, who characterize a ghost-like feel which their white completions. Also, the vulnerability of these girls is emphasized by the music, and the fact they are so easily controlled by this ghost woman. The vulnerability is also shown when the mother screams because the children were obviously apart from their mother, which depicts defenselessness. Also, because they are little girls they reach the stereotype of them being weak and accessible to this ghost.
Media Audiences
The target audience of The Women in Black is young adults, because they enjoy supernatural horror and also it was previously a book aimed at young adults. However, it could also be aimed at teenagers because the star of the film is Daniel Radcliff, the star of Harry Potter and teenagers grew up with him as children.
The dominant reading of this text is that something is controlling these children to want to jump out of the window and kill themselves, but the oppositional could be that the girls are just killing themselves by choice because they are unhappy.
What ideas could we take from the text?
-We could take the idea that everything is very synchronized to create the fear for the audience and allow them to see something is controlling the situation
-We could take the idea of creepy dolls to enhance the horror

1 comment:

  1. This is better in terms of responding to all sections, however you still need to look at narrative.

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