The opening two minutes of Halloween establishes the dark, mysterious setting and introduces several key characters through a series of shots. A long establishing shot shows the building at night, setting the horror tone. Dialogue draws the audience in as questions arise about who is talking. Two teenagers, including the conventional "final girl" character of a young blonde woman, are introduced. A figure in black wearing a mask hints at the villain. Tension builds as the villain creeps closer until a hero saves the girl at the end, though many questions remain unanswered.

1. Analysing the opening
two minutes:
Halloween

2. The opening of Halloween starts with an long shot, which
establishes the building and the setting of this part of the
film. Within this establishing shot we see that the time of day
is night and everything is dark, this has connotations to the
generic themes of a horror film, the darkness symbolises
horror, mystery and fear. This works together with the non
diegetic music to create fearful tension within the audience.
The sound switches from non diegetic music, to diegetic
sound which is dialogue. This use of diegetic sound over the
establishing shot draws the audience into the film and leaves
them asking questions of who is talking, and why?
The shots stay very dark during this opening sequence. This
suggests the continuity of the generic horror genre which is
carried throughout. The next shot then establishes to the
audience who is talking, however they are still left with the
question why? These rhetorical questions are a common
factor within horror films, as the audience is not given too
much to begin with and all is revealed as the film
progresses. Within this next part of the sequence the camera
stays very still unlike during the establishing shot when it
was tracking towards the house as if entering the house and
revealing who was talking. This time the stillness of the
camera allows the dialogue (diegetic sounds) to be more
dominant. Also the children walk out of the frame this adds
to the flow of the film to show the realistic performance of it
all.

3. In this next frame we are introduced to two more characters.
Again the area is still very dark with low key lighting to
continue the flow of the horror genre. This next character is
also a conventional character which is usually in many horror
films, the character is a young teenage, blonde girl, and this
character usually has connotations with the victim of first to
die within horror films. Also we see another character in the
background of the shot. The character is dressed in all black
again suggesting darkness and fear and is also wearing a
mask which has connotations to mystery and the horror of
finding out who this person is. This character is
conventionally seen as the villain.
The camera cuts are not very intense within this scene,
however the camera cuts subtly to show the facial reaction
of the young girl during this section . This also shows the
levels/proximities between these two characters. The villain
gets closer and closer towards the girl until he is
overshadowing/ overpowering her. During this there is also
some non diegetic sound which is played this quickening
pace from the music creates tension within the audience as
they are watching the villain creep towards her however she
does not know what is happening.

4. At the end of the opening two minutes the audience is
introduced to another character. This character could
be seen as a hero, as he saves the girl. However the
audience is left with many questions and not much is
answered within these opening two minutes. The
audience have been introduced to many conventional
characters which are present in a horror film however
the storyline is not yet clear and the audience is left
wondering, who the characters are? What is their
purpose? What is happening and why? And what is
going to happen next?