CODAL ANALYSIS Demi Wrenn

SE7EN• In the SE7EN film opening, the suspense is

extremely high through out. Consisting of fast paced cuts and intimate music. The fast cuts adds a lot of suspense to the opening and gives the audience the code of there is something suspicious going on. Something else that gives this code is the writing, opening and scratching out of the book. This suggests there is un answered questions that will be revealed later on in the movie as to why you should carry on watching the movie. The typical horror conventions are shown extremely well in this opening especially suspence. This is something for me to consider when making my opening.

SAW

• At the beginning of the film open you are automatically introduced to a variety of weapons consisting of guns, knives and hammers. You also see a lot of blood in the room. These two main conventions allow us as the audience to know that the genre of the film is a horror. The code that is given, is that its going to be a horror film just by the simple conventions.

• The camera angles also show how the film follows the conventions because of the rough unsteady handheld camera shots show the perspective of the character and that he/she is possibly on edge.

• The continuous suspense music brings up all tension for the audience and establishes mysterious attributes to the film opening.

The Shining

• The conventions within The shining opening are minimal, it’s a slow opening which is quite contradicting to other horror openings. Even though its extremely slow paced, the music is what builds the suspense. It makes the audience question what the film is about and where the car is going. At the end of the film the car goes to a old haunted house. This gives us the code of the house being a bad place, which then shows us a horror convention as a haunted house is a popular convention in horror films.