Analysis of 'Scream' Opening sequence

Establish some of the key characters:
The opening scene shows the protagonist who is a women, she seems vulnerable and friendly, we are able to hear the voice of the antagonist throughout this opening scene, his voice sounds like a middle aged man who is calm, the man over the phone comes across as friendly as he is trying to make a casual conversation.


Plot/Enigma
The opening scene tells us what the whole story may be about, ‘Scream’ has a slight thriller aspect
it shows High school student who receives a flirtatious phone call from an unknown person, who continues to ask question about the girl. The situation quickly escalates out of control as the caller turns aggressive and threatens her life. He reveals that her boyfriend Steve is being held hostage. After failing to answer a question correctly about horror films, Steve is murdered. When Casey refuses to cooperate with the caller, she is attacked and murdered by a masked killer, and her body is hung from a tree, the unkown caller then goes on to kill other people.

Location and setting
The opening scene is set in the girls house which is supposidly based in the middle of nowhere, the first part of the opening scene is shot in the girls house and then towards the end it escalates to the garden, where we see the girls boyfriend being killed.

Mise-en-scene
In ‘Scream’ the director uses a establishing shot, this sets the scene and shows the audience where the character is.
The Dolly shot shows the audience the garden and then Kacy’s house, this gives off tghe impression that it is a horror movie as the house is miles away from the town, it is isolated and therefore Kacy is also, this shows us that the unknown caller as the antagonist is looking in on her and so is the audience.

The clothes that aare worn in scream rep;resent the time period in which this film was made in which is 1996, the girl is shown in a cardigan and her boyfriend is shown in a football bomber jacket which the american footballers would wear.

‘Scream’ uses sound to scare the audience and character for example at the beginning of th efilm before the opening scene begins we cn hear screansw alos during the film, while kacy was on the phone to the unkown caller she realises she’s being watched so she locks all the doors and looks out the front window she then walks into the other room and then straight after that the door bell rings this scares her and the audience as its unexpected.

The Mise En Scene also shows a horror element in the film an example of this is when Kacy plays with a knife whilst on the phone creating a horror element, she mentions another horror movie where the killer used a kitchen knife as the murder weapon, and this shows us dramatic irony