The conjuring
- 1. The conjuring The fact that the opening scene starts with only dialogue and a blank black screen already sets the mood, we are drawn to focus on the first piece of dialogue “When you hear this you are going to think we are insane” Already there is a threatening situation presented to the viewers, which hints that there is insanity situations bound to be present in the film. There is the use of ambient sounds of the recording tape being set and then rolling, this creates a realistic feeling of an interview. The opening of the first scene uses disembodiment, as it is a close up of the dolls eye, immediately this creates a sense of fear for the viewers as they are awkwardly positioned very close up to the frightening object. This is a long take as it feels like we are staring at this object for a long period of time, this is probably done because the director wants us to remember this prop as it is important. At first you are not able to make out what the object is, this creating the sense of mystery and risk, and so this forces the audience into looking at that one particular part of the object and they analyze until they figure it out. Because it is only showing what the director is intentionally trying to show us this is because they want us to focus on that particular aspect because it could end up being something important, or it could simply just be a warm up and it is preparing us of what is to come. Then there are the close up shots of the girls faces when they speak, then there is a zoom out shot when they calmly explain the innocence of the petrifying situation, but the zoom out shot in a way is allowing the audience to see the bigger picture and to not get cheated into believing the naive story. The short cut away shot to the doll makes it seem like the doll is part of the conversation and almost creates a sadistic comical effect to it, because it makes the audience question the characters choices, also the timing of the dialogue where it says that they let the spirit inhibit the doll, and showing the doll at that moment makes the viewer’s feel unsafe, as there’s already signs of possessive, twisting, controlling behavior,as there is an innocence to a child’s doll and if it had the power to convince the owners to allow it to live with them, it makes the audience question, what other things would the doll be capable of doing? The lighting of the opening sequence, throughout is very dark, the audience can just about see the characters, the dim light causing a secretive shadowy environment making the safety of the characters questionable to the audience. The characters wear a lot of colorful clothing but it’s hardly seen because it is so dark, this connotes to the audience that The prop of the doll creates a chilling feeling as a doll is known as an innocent child’s toy, to use it as a scary possessed doll cause a lot of uneasiness and a bloodcurdling feeling because something so innocent and childlike has been transformed to a prop of evil. Another prop is the sheet of paper that has writing on it saying “Miss me?” This definitely has an alarming effect because it makes you wonder how
- 2. At the beginning there is hardly any use of sound, but as the story goes on and because more intense, music accompanies it. it is positioned on the chair and how it is directly staring at the camera, all of this builds tension because the unraveling story Drag me to hell Straight away the title of the film is shown in black and white, this draws viewers’ attention straight away as it is accompanied with theatrical intense music on top, and then there is a quick transition in music and colour, the music being more classical and the colours are more browns, this face paced music and the transition suggest that the film itself will include a lot of fast paced scenes. There is use of drawings in the opening sequence and this is very effectively used as a montage. This makes it seem like the audience is reading a book, therefore it is telling a story, and doing it with pictures is just as strong as dialogue. The story starts of very dark with colour and the music is faint and quiet, it then slowly brightens up a little as it does the music becomes more intensified and louder, and the images shown are portraying horrific scenes, there is use of synchronous sound here. The colour brown creates a woody texture effect and the costume of the characters in the drawing is wearing Tudor style clothing and so it was set a while back. Using drawings for the opening is used very well as it highlights the facial expression of the characters a lot, like when one character in the drawing is screaming, you can’t hear anything but you know she because her facial expression is showing terror and fear.The scene where the black fog captures the characters creates a sense of entrapment, and they are trying to escape but they can’t. There is Theme music, this is non diegetic sound that has been put in after the recording and it is used throughout the whole starting sequence, and when the scenes changes it goes a long with the rhythm of the music, the use of musicality creates a more rowdier atmosphere., making the audience aware of the energetic scenes. The editing pace changes towards the end, the scenes change quicker toward the end Towards the end we get to see more props and real life drawings of the scenes and it gives us a bigger picture to view at which allows us to see a bit of the natural environment Towards the end there is fire burning the images up this is very affective as it concludes that there is no happy endings and it links with the title drag me to hell, which immediately creates an image in your mind of demands and dark demonic things.