Insidious scene reflecting on theories and techniques

1. The scene I am using for this analysis is the drawing scenein the film insidious.
A woman called Elise is called as she is an expert in unusualactivity. She goes
into Dalton’s room wherehe is lying in bed in a coma, soothes him then she
notices something very scary in the top corner of the room leaning over Dalton
so as shedescribes it her assistantdraws itand then the parents see what is
behind Dalton’s coma. This scene is on the stage of recognition of Todorov’s
theory as they have justfound out what the whole situation is and whatis
behind it all. The 3 key continuity editing techniques they used for this stage
are, the use of intense music in the scene that gradually gets louder and high
angles to show that what they recognisehas much more power than people
like Dalton’s parents and Elise. They don’t really change whatthe audience can
see, for most of the scene the camera is at a high angle facing Elise and is
slowly zooming in on her facing to highlight her reaction to what she can see
and as the camera slowly zooms in the music gets louder. These techniques
make the scene very smooth so sets a good continuity to the recognition stage
of Todorov’s theory.
Levi Strauss’ theory can also be applied to this scenein quite a few ways. As it
is a horror film there is a strong senseof Good vs Evil, the scene shows signs on
Demon vs Human as the demon is seen placed aboveDalton who is sick in bed
and is now leaning over Elise now she has noticed it on the ceiling. They is also
an opposition of natural vs unnaturalas Elise and Dalton’s parents are the
natural and are in Dalton’s roomto give him somecompany whilst in a coma
and the demon in the corner of the ceiling is unnatural as its not human and its
obviously unnaturalto have a demon hiding in the shadows in the corner of a
little boy’s room, this brings a shock to the natural people in this scene. And
finally it shows theopposition of light and dark as when the camera is facing
the people in Dalton’s room they are lit up to show they are the good people in
the film and when Elise notices something on the ceiling that no one else can
see a very dark shadow is over whereshe is looking to show a high level of evil
on whatshe has come across.
This backs up mise en scenetoo as the scenehas camera shots of the whole
roomto show the location, it shows Elise’s facialexpression when she finds the
demon, the lighting as mentioned aboveshows the good and evil in the scene,
the camera uses shots of justthe notebook to show whatthe guy is drawing is
a key partto the story and is important too