Slasher film opening

Slasher Film Deconstruction

Instant death opening:

The viewer is immediately engrossed into the film.

The viewer will want to know why the victim has been targeted.

The viewer will want to know how they were killed, (sometimes, even thought the death is shown in the opening, it is not clear how it happens or why, it is left to be figured out by other characters in the rest of the film)

The viewer is made to feel very uneasy from the beginning.

By having action straight away keeps the viewer interested in the film.

The immediate death scene can be made to look original by combining the idea with a great location and good casting of actors.

The girl in the opening on Scream is evidently the first girl to get murdered. We can see this film will follow the conventions of a slasher because 'The Final girl theory' states that the first girl who dies will be sexual promiscuous, blonde, have a boyfriend, isn't a virgin etc. Therefore Drew Barrymore's character follows these conventions. the opening scene mainly consists of just this character. The first camera angle we see here is an eye level shot. This is so the audience can observe the scene in a human way. This makes the scene appear normal as the girl is going about her every day routine. After the girl puts down the phone to continue her evening, it rings again and the camera angle changes to oblique/canted. 

The camera angle has changed to a canted/ oblique angle here as the phone rings again for the second time. This shows to the audience that the character is going through a sense of fear which could lead to disorientation. As the scene continues onwards the audience starts to feel more scared and unnerved due to the camera angles and the expression on the characters face. The camera angle goes back to an eye level shot after this scene.

The phone rings for the third time and the camera goes back to eye level. This is almost tricking the audience into thinking everything is okay as the character is making popcorn and talking in a flirty tone. The character is wearing a yellow jumper and blue shorts which are both signs of purity and thus subverts the characters personality. Blue and yellow are both pastel colours that can appear as cute and immature which suggest that the character is also flirty and playful. Finally the hairstyle for the girl is a short, blonde bob which represents the time the film was filmed in, also the short hair frames her small face and accentuates her features. Drew Barrymore's character also has a fringe which is normal for the time period. This girl cannot hide behind her hair and the shortness also shows her shoulders and if she was to wear a tank top it would accentuate them. The mise en scene of the room is very normal, the girl is placed in her house and everything appears normal which subverts what's actually happening in the scene.

Sound
The opening also starts with a non-diegetic scream which gives the audience a sense of foreboding into what might happen in the end of the movie. The phone rings before this occurs which portrays that the phone call is going to have major significance to the scene. The non-diegetic music appears again when the person on the phone says 'I want to know who I'm looking at', this therefore scares the young girl who's on the receiving end of the call and the music adds to the rising tension. The orchestral strings music is a low, ominous sound. After a diegetic sound appears which is a dog barking. When dogs bark that suggests something/ someone has disrupted it and it's barking to alert people. The teenage girl starts to panic here and continues to lock all the doors and turn the lights on.

Camera Movement 
Throughout the opening there are lots of pans which follows the character around the scene which suggests the normality of the scene and also puts the audience into the characters shoes. When the teenage girl starts to run to lock the doors surrounding her home the camera shifts to a slight tilt as she turns the corners. This reflects to the audience that soon something bad will happen as the camera movement reflects the distress in the character's mind. The camera movement is very basic in the opening scene to reflect the normality of the characters situation.

From this deconstruction I can infer that camera angles, diegetic and non-diegetic sound are the key aspects which create the slasher films tension and fright which are inflicted upon the audience watching the movie. The camera angles change as the scenes start to become more frightening. The diegetic sound of the killer over the phone the entire scene made the character scared and isolated. Therefore making the audience unnerved and frightened by what may happen.