'The ring' movie opening

The Ring



The two girls in the opening scene are represented as two normal teenage schoolgirls, as they are having a sleepover and trading secrets. They start to gossip about a 'video tape' saying that after you watch it, the phone rings and says 'you're gonna die in seven days'. They then become really paranoid about it.

The first camera shot we see is a big house in the middle of the night because it is pitch black and raining outside. The 'big house in the middle of the night' is a generic convention on the horror genre. Straight away in draws the audience in becasuse we wonder who is inside the house and what part in the film it plays. The camera angle starts of zoomed to allow the seeting to be scene, then it slowly zooms in as they have a conversation. The shot then switches to the stairs and the camera stays still and when they walk down the stairs you see their feet up to their facial expressions. The camera then swithes to a close up of the phone and then a mid-shot of the girls looking at the phone in horror. When one girl is in the kitchen and hears a noise she freezes up and the camera zooms in on her face to show how scared she is. The camera then pans round the corner and looks in the lounge as if its a point-of-view shot from the girl because she is looking round.

The Mise-en-scene is a bedroom, we see that it is probably a teenagers room- belonging to one of the girls- because it's messy and cluttered. The pillow on the bed have clothes on (not folded up) and on the floor there are school books and clothes. The inside of the house is very plain and tidy, this is used so there is a lot room for the girls to feel scared because the house is so big and empty.

The sound in the opening scene is very quiet with the noise of the rain outside in the background, when the girls go downstairs the rain becomes quieter so the scene becomes more sinister. Then when the T.V is on the sound of it is really loud and over-powering, after the T.V gets turned off for the second time she hears a wind-like sound behind her (another typical generic convention of the horror genre). When the fridge door opens a scary music starts to play really lightly in the background and this continues as she goes up the stairs and becomes louder when she gets upstairs and in the room, this is used to build tension.

I like the establishing shot at the very start of this scene, when you see hte house in the dark, in the rain because automatically the audience know it is a horror because it is a typical generic convention of the genre.

The close-up on facial expressions are very effective because they establish the characters feelings and let you focus on that.