Tiffany Chen
Brusutti
FAMST 46
15 December 2017
The editing of the opening sequence is shot all in one take, the camera pans around Chris. It sets the atmosphere for what the audience expects of a horror genre with the eerie lighting and lone character walking down a dark empty street. The lighting is lowkey, with only the street lights illuminating the character slowly bringing closer to the audience who the man walking is. The scene sets up the overall narrative creating a space for the film to begin rolling out the suspenseful scene. The establishing shot of Chris in a suburban neighborhood is then highlighted that he is an outsider and feels uncomfortable with where is through his body language where is phone and arms are clenched tightly against his body.
The opening of the scene very quickly uses intertextualization to test our prior knowledge of horror to set the atmosphere. The lighting as stated before is lowkey and diffuses the brightness making the position of the character and environment dark and creepy. The sequence is a long tracking shot that pans and follows the character to give us an establishing shot of where he is. It creates an atmosphere of unease, highlighting that the character is about to face trouble. The lighting pinpoints specific actions in the sequence, for example, the dark empty street then a bright white car contrasting the environment following the character. The camera goes in and out of focus from Chris to the car, highlighting the later importance of the car.
The diegetic sound in the film is played through the consistent low cricket chirping as the character walks down the street talking on his phone. When the car comes into the frame, there is a muffled and upbeat cheery music playing coming from the radio in it. The song becomes louder and louder as it approaches and the character still remains oblivious to the obvious danger that he is in. This creates suspense and as soon as the shot pans to the car, the door open, then to the kidnapping scene. The song gets louder and more audible throughout the struggle between the kidnapper and the character. The kidnappers face remains out the the shot maintaining the mystery and suspense of who they are. As soon as the kidnapper slams the door, the music stops leaving an ambiguity of what will happen to the character in the trunk. A new non-diegetic sound is introduced into the sequence, the jumpy opening of Danse Macabre which finally ends the suspense of what will happen to the character.
With a long take, the car begins to drive further and further away then cuts to a spatial edit of the trees passing. The high key lighting shot of the trees contrasts with the dark lowkey lighting beforehand. The trees in the scene have an unnatural blue tint to set a state of tension. This leads the viewer to possibly assume where the kidnapper is going, an isolated area which foreshadows certain events in the future. With this scene, the non-diegetic sound is the song possi...
