Narrative Structure and Representation in 3 Slasher Openings

Considering what to expect in the films e.g Sex age textuality Architype and include your own interpritation. Always back it up with specific detail from what you can see from the txt and use semiotics to denote and connote and explain and say why these signifiers were used and why they were chosen to be shown.
E.g A Red rose connotes romance
look at the characters clothing and how they speak
E.g Adult figures of authority and showing their power to inferior characters such as children

The Three films that I looked at were The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper 1974), A Nightmare on Elm Street (Samuel Bayer 2010) and Halloween (John Carpenter 1978)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)


Opening Shot of mangled body 

The opeing shot is a close up of a mangled up face, then the camera slowly zoom's out of it and reveales a shot of a grave yard with a dusty american background also theis scene has diegetic audio of a radio which is telling the audience of what crime happened to make this startling scene apear.



Showing or giving some info in the titles of what is going to happen

The Titles of the the film are a yellow colour on a black background also they are a san serif font which indicates the film will be very dramtic and sort of scary,The titles go upwards off the screen so that more come up however this can give off a sence of mystery of where its leading

 

Scream Queen of this film

The typical screem queen is not shown in this film due to the female character is a brown haired interlectual character who seems to have alot of common sense also she is not a very busty woman therefore she doesnt have the atributes of a typical screem queen

A Nightmare on Elm Street (Samuel Bayer, 2010)

Freddie Krueger  (The Killer)

The Opening shot of the film is a medium shot which shows the killer Freddie in shot which is unusual for a slasher film to just reveal the killer straight from the opening shot as it removes all of the narrative enigma. It also gives the audience a little information on who and what the killer looks like and what weapon he uses to kill his victims with, These being the bladed hands shown in the picture above.

This shot is a long shot of the bed of which the final girl is in of which shows that the focus is on her and that the killing is taking place in her dream. The lighting has been focused on the bed and purely the girl in the bed to add more effect and emphasis on her which is key to capture the audiences attention

Long Establishing shot of scream queen

This shot shows the scream queen locked or tied up in a room of where she is about to die, this shot is in her dreams and all the focus of this is on the girl sat in the chair, you can tell this because of the way the light is reflecting on her and making her look in the middle of the light. This shows the audience that there is only one character on screen that is visible at this moment of the film.

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1987)

The opening shot of the film Halloween is an extreme long shot of the house of which the final girl or in this case the sister of the killer is in, the shot has a title before it with halloween the date on it and then we follow the camera in as a POV shot towards the house

The Killer in this film is linked with the victim, this is the archytype where by the boy you see here is the younger brother of the the victim which is the girl who he kills in the opening sequence. The girl he kills would count as the screem queen due to her actions leading up to the killing.

This shot shows the victims commiting a sin which would be seen as bad by god and that is why they are being killed due to what follows by them progressing upstairs and then having sexual intercoaurse upstairs and that would be a signifier as to why they were killed