Saskia Smith AS Media Production

The women in black opening scene is really clever. It manages to get the whole backgreound story and current narrative in the first two minutes of the film so the audience is very clear about what has happened. The soundtrack at the beginning starts with hgih pitch violin sounds that are at a catchy rhtym that may have been used in a childrtens rhyme.

 

The first shot is a high angle on two tea cups and a pot that is used by one of the three children, this immediately tells us that children are going to be invovled in the film. The next shots are of scary looking dolls and then the children are introduced and theyre sitting on the floor having a normal tea party, playing with their tea sets and dolls. 

 

The sounbdtrack at this point creates a creepy atmosphere. There are shots of the girls looking happy and enjoying themselves when the music changhes slightly from the light nursery rhyme there is a slight pause and the music is introduced again but louder and deeper, the camera angle switched to a high angle shot that the three children look towards in sync. 

 

After this everything the children do is in sync and the music sounds eerie and from then the sudience can sense a change in mood and can tell something has happened. The camera starts zooming into the windows to show the audience that something is going to happen with that window, after this there are different shots on the ground of the girls standing on the tea set and breaking the china cups and other parts of the set. A common convwention of a thriller is something egtting destroyed or breaking. The fact that the young girls are doing this makes the audience queston if they are possessed as we wouldnt expect them to do that.

These shots of the childrens party make something ordinary seem unordinary.

 

After the girls jump out of the window we hear screams from their mother which are quite loud and disturbing.

After that we see a zooming out shot with a black figure where the three girls were looking at. Throughout this openiong scene the colours are all washed out and dull which we dont expect when we see a childs encironment, we expect to see bright colours.

 

We then cut to the title sequence where the audience are still being informed of the narrative. It fades into shots of clouds and screenings of two people putting rings on each other which connotes two peoples marriage. They use plain black font whuch fades in and out from the clouds. It works quite well as there is moving image still happening. The soundtrack is slower znd the use of violins creates and calmer effect.

 

It then returns too the narrative with the main character Daniel Radcliff looking at himself in the mirror, an over the shoulder shot is used which is common for a shot of someone looking in a mirror. We then go on to understand more of the narrative when he sees he's dead wife behind him and his young son comes in and gives us a clearer idea about whats going on.

 

Throughtout the scenes are dark and washed out which works really well. The use of the clouds when the titles are on is good as it represents his wife in heaven and up in the sky. It is set in Victorian times and the mise-en-scene to support that is very good.