Thriller Title Sequence 2010 Group 12

In class we watched clips of five thriller film openings, and I have chosen to do a detailed analysis of The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick. The opening shows the main character, Jack Torrence driving to a hotel, where we find out that he is applying for a job.

The camera is used in many ways, but one type of shot used throughout pretty much the whole opening sequence is bird's eye view. We track the car from overhead, following it through the journey, as the scenery gets more and more death-like and isolated from other people. The start of the clip shows the car coming into shot as the camera skims over a lake and on top of the road, and this is where we 'follow' him from.

The clip has almost no dialogue, right until the last minute, and so before that it is all music. The music is very good at creating suspense as it incorporates the bass drone, along wiht screeching, and works really well. The screeching noise sounds almost like screaming, pre-empting what will happen in the rest of the film; death and horror. The music makes the viewer anxious and worried about where the car is driving to, and almost makes you want to make him turn around and go home. There are also chimes used, which sound quite eery and makes the viewer get goosebumps.

Mise-en-scene is covered in the clip by always having the car drive into darkness, whether that be a tunnel, shadows or just the darkness cast over the land by the mountains, and this shows that he is driving away from the good and into bad. This conveys to the audience that there may be very bad things about to happen in this place.

All of the cuts are slow and almost invisible, for example, as he drives into a tunnel it cuts to the next shot, and is almost unnoticable to the viewer, as the car is always in the middle of the shot. This makes the viewer feel comfortable, and nothing is jerking around, and we can gradually see the surrounding become more and more scary. There is also the use of a black screen after the car journey is over, leading the viewer into a sense of panic, as we do not know where the character has gone!

However, the titles are not done very well, as they interfere with the suspenseful feelings by having light blue words scroll up the screen; it is almost off putting, like the director wants you to think about them instead of what is happening behind them. they come very slowly, one at a time, and this bores the viewer, who seems to just want the titles to end so the film can start; disrupting the suspense that has been built up.