Scream Analysis

How is the opening sequence of scream conventional to a thriller opening?

This opening scene starts off with the young woman Casey (Drew Barrymore) is getting ready to watch a movie in her house. The antagonist then torments her over the phone, and the scene ends with the antagonist attacking her and left for dead.

This scene has been set in a large house, which is in the middle of nowhere. The beginning of this scene the isolated house has been shown with an establishing shot , you see this after she picks up the phone. As this happens when the audience see that she is isolated in her own home, where she is supposed to be safe and comfortable. But if there is anything to happen she will have nowhere to get help or to run away. Furthermore this unsettles the audience because the audience can relate to Casey’s situation, as the audience like to spend their nights in; this will change the audience’s perception of being safe at home. The audience suspect that she is in an isolated area and there could be bad things that happen to her, then her house isn’t as safe as she thought…

With the sounds that have been used in this scene the non-diegetic sound was the soundtrack that was playing in the background, this is shown when Casey is running around the house in the middle of the scene, the reason why there is a soundtrack is to enhance the audience’s reaction to what is happening on screen, also to make them more interested in what happening on the screen. What the diegetic sound of this screen is the phone call and Casey talking down the phone at the beginning, since you know that the sound is part of the film world and it is like it is really happening. This is shown at the start as you can see that Casey is talking to the caller on the phone, also the phone is part or iconography because the phone call is what starts the whole thing in this scene. Furthermore getting back to the conversation with the Casey and the antagonist is diegetic as you could also see where the sound is coming from which is on screen, also in the conversation with the caller she was calm and flirtatious with the caller since see is in her own house and feels safe, because she is comfortable of where she is and with herself she is confident to talk to strangers as she is able to be flirting with a complete stranger...

As the female victim is preparing for her film while on the phone (cooking pop corn) and walking around the house, as she walks around certain parts of the house still on the phone in certain areas of the house there is low key lighting shown and her shadow is strongly casted on the walls. How the audience respond to this is that they suspect that she is in danger because the caller doesn’t seem as innocent as it was shown at first which gives the audience something to think about, but as more and more Casey talks to the caller the more scared she becomes she starts to become frighten as the caller starts to show that this is where he is more evil as he sounds over the phone, soon as the low key lighting area of the house shows to the audience is that she isn’t as safe as she thinks she is, with this is it links back to what I said earlier with how the house is isolated. As she walks though the corridor when she is on the phone this is a sign to the audience that the low key lighting means that the antagonist is catching up with her the more she talks to him, she becomes more vulnerable as she is even more scared of the antagonist, linking with sound the caller uses the phone call to show his power as he doesn’t need to be on screen to scare the victim and to question the audience of what the antagonist is going to do to Casey. Which makes the audience be more on the seats trying to find out what is going to happen to her, if she is going to die or not.

With the audience being on the edge of the seats because of what they see, what makes it more interesting to them is that the pace of the editing that happens in this scene. At the beginning of the film when Casey first picks up the phone the slow paced editing is shown here, and what the audience can interpret from this is that as it is slow paced there would be nothing that would happen to her but as the audience has seen the phone and when it calls. This is when the editing slowly speeds up as I have said previously the more she has answered the phone the more scared she becomes and frighten because of what the antagonist says over the phone. After the third phone call the editing is shown here when it speeds up to faced paced, as the pace of the scene has climbed up with the audience and what has been said in the conversation the audience empathises for Casey as they can pick up that she will either die or get away. The audience can interpret that the phone call is the biggest part of editing and iconography as it is what shows the editing pace of the scene because the phone call is what starts off this scene of the movie, also the phone is part of iconography because of the same reason. However the pace of the scene increased after the third as I said before, but another small part of iconography is that the knife she was playing with over the phone and to use for her defence is the same weapon that ends up killing her….

In conclusion, this opening of scream is conventional to a thriller because it shows all the parts of cinematography, editing, sounds, and mise en scene. With the cinematography part of the thriller it shows the power and fear of the antagonist as well as iconography with the phone shown that the antagonist doesn’t need to be shown in the scene to be scared of. The sounds and editing are linked because the editing pace and the editing of the camera shots work well together as the sounds of the film world and the editing of the scene is slow but as the pace picks up and there is disruption shown on screen the editing speeds up and the scene has a soundtrack in the background to enhance what is happening and to scare the audience and have emotion for Casey. This is a conventional thriller because it has all the elements that are needed for a thriller, and to make the audience feel what they feel when watching a thriller.