3. Woman In Black
There is a short bit at the start of the film where there
is equilibrium , the children are sitting down having a
tea party with their teddies and dolls. However, only a
short time after we see a disruption and this
threatens the calm state the viewer is in. This is when
the kids look directly into the camera. This gives the
audience the impression that something is behind
them before they jump out. The main disruption in
the film is that the Woman in black kills innocent
people. In the opening sequence, we see a couple of
girls playing in what looks to be a bedroom, they are
having what looks to be a good time when they all
star at the camera, drop their cups and dolls and head
to the window. When they are at the window, they
open it and all jump out. The camera then moves
back and behind a dark, shadowed figure which is the
woman in black. We can immediately tell that the
woman in black is the villain in the film as the way the
children did what they did, it was like an order out of
shot to jump and they obeyed the order. Looking
through the opening sequence, there is no sighting of
the hero who wants to find out what is going on and
try and get rid of the woman in black. The only thing
we do see is the villain and as this is a horror film, the
director wants to keep it scary from the start.
Within the opening sequence, the audience
can already sense a binary opposite between
good and evil and maybe normal and
paranormal as it has an eerie feeling whilst
watching. The opening sequence does give
away the narrative of the film as we see what
the woman in black does and obviously,
someone is going to have to stop the deaths.
There is also the narrative theory from
Barthes, enigma codes. The audience will
want to know why the woman in black made
the girls jump, who is she, why is she in the
bedroom and is she even real. Enigma codes
get the audience thinking and it further
engages them.
4. The Purge
The purge starts off by showing extreme violence on CCTV
cameras in different locations around America. Right from
the beginning, there is no equilibrium. The violence starts
as soon as the first credit disappears. This suggests that
the film is all about violence as it is the first thing which has
been shown. Then all of a sudden, the film introduces a
character who is in car, this is where the equilibrium starts
as there is no violence at this point. In the film, the
disruption is obviously The Purge, where a 12 hour crime
period takes place as the crime rate is so low. It allows
members of neighbourhoods to fight each other, steal
from shops or stay inside and wait for the 12 hours until
things are back to normal. This is also the conflict part in
the film, everyone wants to fight each other and mass
attacks are carried out . In the first few minutes, it is
unclear who the hero is, there are a lot of villains who are
unidentifiable as we do not now them and the audience an
only see them causing chaos and violence. We don't see
any of Propp’s narrative theories within the first minutes.
Straight from the beginning, the viewers can see a binary
opposite which is taking place. In the purge the main
binary opposites are War VS Peace and Love VS Hate. I
also think there is an enigma code in the film. The director
wants to create mystery and this is clear at the start
because we don't know why the purge takes place, who
allows the purge to exist and why its 12 hours long.
5. Submarine
From watching the opening sequence of
Submarine, I found it hard to guess the
narrative of the whole film as there is only a
few shots of the a character, presumably the
main character. However, I think the film is
about a teenage boy who is living in a small
town in the middle of nowhere near a coast. I
think this as there is a panno of the boy’s room
and it is messy, this is relative to a lot of
teenagers. At this point, this is the only person i
have seen so I am unsure if he is a hero or
villain but as he is the first person the audience
see i think he will have a lot of contribution in
the movie. The director may have only included
one person and an extremely vague opening
scene in terms of setting, who is involved and
that kind of stuff as it creates questions. At this
current point, i feel there’s only on binary
opposite which could be feature in the film
which is man vs wild as there are a lot of
cinematic shots of trees, sea and fields.
