Textual Analysis - Narrative

The Others:
The opening sequence in this film consisted of a voice-over telling a fairy tale with disturbing illustrations to accompany it. We didn't really feel that it was very effective, as it did not highlight the genre as clearly as it could have. A woman in all white awoke screaming; this contrasted the title sequence. We liked this dramatic contrast and it linked very obviously with the psychological sub-genre. We also liked the introduction of the children - it gave it a sense of mysterious, supernatural behavior. The candle lighting was suitable for this type of movie. Although we enjoyed this, we feel it's not suitable for our film as it highlights the wrong time period.

1408:
We enjoyed the title sequence to this film, with the presense of the preacher, talking in the background. It contrasts the theme and genre. We thought that the appearance of the titles in the car headlights was particularly effective - it gave a smooth, subtle transition to the titles. In the first three minutes, we were given the background story of our main character. Something we found particularly effective in the opening 10 minutes was the use of varying camera shots; the shot from inside the cabinet we found to be very effective - the sense of a point of view inside the cabinet was interesting and we would like to incorporate a similar style into our film.

Silent Hill:
We enjoyed the opening ten minutes of this film - the use of biblical references we found to be very effective (i.e. when we see bible passages in shot and/or crosses etc.). We feel that using a biblical reference in our film would be good and would help to reinforce our chosen genre. The varied flashing images were interesting and could be used in our opening to a horror. The aerial shot where we saw the transition from a normal setting to a representation of hell was a very interesting idea, which worked well. The contrast between this firey setting and the settings that followed (such as a meadow on a summers day) really helped to create tension.

Dark water:
The introduction to this film really caught the attention of the audience - the young girl singing insy winsy spider created an eerie atmosphere. We noticed that the colours in the main character's flashbacks were full, easily creating this sense of a memory. The reoccurring rattle of the toy during the flashbacks made us feel that there was something significant about this subject. The buildings in the settings look really old and run down and this goes well with the genre. We particularly liked the shot where you could see the woman looking out of the window whilst it rained.