Halloween

Task 2 research into existing products

Horror: Halloween 1978 (John Carpenter)

Synopsis

Halloween was directed by John Carpenter in 1978. On a cold, dark Halloween night. It starts from outside in the street where someone puts on a mask and starts walking towards the house. The person outside follows his sister (Judith Myers) around the house where they are kissing passionately on the sofa and watches through the window. Judith and her boyfriend go upstairs to have sex, whilst doing so the boy sees the light in the upstairs window go out and begins swiftly walking back to the side of the house through the kitchen door. when he is in the house he opens the kitchen draw and gets out a knife, the figure starts moving towards the stairs when the boyfriend comes down the stairs, puts his shirt on and leaves, the figure starts moving towards the stairs and goes up, he goes towards his sisters bedroom where he sees his sister sitting naked in front of the mirror brushing her hair. He starts moving towards his sister when she suddenly sees him and starts screaming he then quickly gets the knife and starts stabbing her repeatedly.

She falls to the ground covered in blood. The brother walks out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out the front door as a car pulls into the street. Judith's parents. Seeing Michael, they pull off his clown mask, revealing the face of a young 6-year-old boy still clutching the knife in one hand. His parents stare at him in horror seeing that he has killed his older sister.

Mise en scene

Loud piano and low key strung music with a dark background creates intensity and anxiety, with the names of cast and crew appearing one by one in orange writing with a pumpkin next to the names representing the name of the film and hinting at the theme, dark backgrounds and colours are usual for this genre. The pitch of the music gets louder making the mood and atmosphere more intense. We are then given the name of the state and town in white with a black screen and white with children’s voices singing in the background creating a spooked atmosphere.

the title 'Halloween' is big and bold and in kind of jucster position next to the pumpkin, the title has the biggest font out of all the texts so far, we see a variety of colour’s including reds, blacks which are colour’s of Halloween, specially horror colours.

Camera angles

at the start of the sequence we see a extreme long shot of a pumpkin in a black background, with a an orange pumpkin, this makes the pumpkin stand out whilst not using any lighting, this creates a dark and scary atmosphere for the audience and lets the audience know it's a horror story. Slowly zooming into the left side of the pumpkin. The pumpkin symbolises the connotation of Halloween and the theme. The candle which is lit in the pumpkin creates a distracting atmosphere.

 

There is then an extreme long shot frame of the house, its starts from a low angle and then finishes in the same place. In the background we also see an owl. The opening sequence also uses a hand held camera.

There is also a subjective point of view whilst the figure is building up to commit murder, whilst this is happening we are led up to believe till the point the mask is taken of that it as an adult, the reason why this is might be because it was filmed from an high angle shots.

Establishing shot of a house which stands out from the black background. There is absolutely no sound except from digetic sounds from crickets which add to the suspense even more because it’s as if someone is sneaking up on the house

Point of view shot showing the movements of a figure and hiding discretely too. It makes the audience aware that there is something or someone else there when the main character does not know as this adds suspense to the viewers and questions them as to what is going to happen next

Sound and editing

The sound is non-diegetic and is a background piece of music whilst the movie is starting. The background music is like a child like piano piece, it's scary, original; the notes build up and then slow down again and have this continuous frequency through the opening sequence. We can also in the background little kids singing Halloween songs.

Non- diegetic sound consists of the piano

Diegetic sound consist of the draw opening and also the footsteps of the figure.

whist the tension is building up to death of a girl we can hear church bells ringing in the background symbolising that time is running out and is like a religious countdown, whilst the sister sits brushing her hair she is naked, meaning that she feels she’s the only one in the house and is venerable to the death.

Titles

When the titles appear they appear on the right side of the screen, the colour scale of the titles change and goes from yellow, to a strange and confused red colour. The connotation of this could be that it's symbolising fire. Also when the titles are fading in and out, whilst the camera zooms in on the pumpkin and also they fade in faster, than they fade out and then finish with a blood red.