TEXTUAL ANALYSIS: TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF MOVING IMAGE LANGUAGE AND CONVENTION
Halloween
CAMERA ANGLE, SHOT, It’s a point of view
MOVEMENT, POSITION. shot and allows us to
Close up; long shot; wide get into the mind of
shot; two-shot; high angle; the murderer. There
low angle; aerial shot; point are also aerial shots
of view; pan; tilt; track;
of the knife and some
zoom; reverse zoom;
of the scenery.
framing; composition
EDITING
Shadows are used
Sound and vision editing) virtually all of the time
cut; fade; wipe; FX;
and the sounds have
dissolve; superimpose;
been made more
slow motion;
apparent to make it
synchronous/asynchronous seem scarier e.g. the
sound
stabbing is very loud.
SOUND
They have used the
Soundtrack; theme tune;
sound track of the
incidental music; sound
film as the main
effects; ambient sound;
sound of the film. The
dialogue; voice over; mode voices- screams and
of address/direct address. shouting are frequent
and the voice of the
murderer is very
angry, and gives us a
sense of madness.
Further more when
every some one is
killed the sound track
Scream
There are a lot of
long, wide and low
shots. The low shots
give the impression
that she is powerless
and it is inevitable
that she will be killed.
Screaming and
shouting are the
main sounds also the
voice of the killer has
effects on it to make
it seem more
menacing and give
less of an indication
of who is true identity.
The phone scene at
the beginning of the
film is a good
example of the
Vertigo
The main camera
shot is zooming in
and out to show how
scared he is of
heights when he is
hanging from the
guttering.
There is blurring and
shaking when his
vertigo is shown and
music is used
through out the
chase scenes and
murders.
The films sound track
is often through out
and the screams and
shouting of the
characters
Film name
SPECIAL EFFECTS
Graphics; captions;
computer generated
images (CGI); animation;
pyrotechnics; stunts;
models; back projections.
MISE-EN-SCENE
Location; set; studio/set
design; costume;
properties; ambient
lighting; artificial lighting;
production design
period/era; colour design.
is played and it builds dialogue within the
whenever some one
film. They also have
is being watched.
the official
soundtrack of the
film, which is played
through out the film.
There is a lot of blood There are leaps and
and stunts include
jumps when he stabs
the killer jumping on
the first girl. Special
a car. Captions are
effects are used
used in the opening
when her boyfriend is
scenes to illustrate
killed but no one was
the importance of
standing in front of
Halloween.
him the blood
appears on his chest
from out of nowhere.
A lot of the scenes
are shot in residential
areas to make it
closer to life. He is
dressed in a hospital
robe when he
escapes from the
secure unit. But he is
previously dressed
as a small boy and
as a man in normal
every day clothes to
blend in. He also
The white scream
mask and completely
black robes suggest
mystery and horror.
This is shot in a quite
village where you
wouldn’t expect any
thing like this to
happen. It is also
very dark which
means that you cant
see him or where he
is, the lights are often
Running across the
buildings and
jumping over the
gaps are the main
stunts in the film. At
the beginning of the
film the definition of
Vertigo was shown to
illustrate what the
film would be about
and how vertigo
might be included.
Most of the film was
filmed in a city area,
lots of buildings are
used in the film
weather they are just
in the camera shot or
in the scenes where
they are ran on and
jumped over. The
lighting used
depends on the
mood of the main
character; whenever
wears a white mask
to hide is face.
switched off to add
more suspense.
When the killer
strikes the lights
often go off to allow
him to stay unknown
to the audience.
he is distressed the
lighting reflects this.
This is shown in the
main chase scene
the lighting is very
dark just before he
makes his leap and
misses the ledge.
I have chosen these three films because all of these films contain elements which I want to include in my film and I feel that analysing
them would be very useful for my project. One example of this would be the point of view shot used in the opening scene of
Halloween, it would fit perfectly with my trailer as I am making a stalker film, in that scene he also looks through windows and tries
not to be caught, this is what I would like to achieve with my film. The location of these movies is also important to me as they are all
set in housing estates or residential areas. My trailer is likely to be located in an area like that so seeing areas like that on those films
will help me work out how to film it in those areas. Residential areas are good to film suspense or horror movies in because it makes
the audience think that it could happen to anyone and that no one is safe. The lighting especially in Scream or Halloween is useful to
me because they using a lot of dark lighting which could help keep the Stalker a mystery, I would use these techniques so the
audience doesn’t know who the stalker is and so theirs mystery about it. I believe that I will try to use the same conventions and
techniques used in these movies in my trailer as they are used heavily in thriller, suspense and horror movies so they should work for
me, they should make my trailer better and it should help it fit in with the genre easier.