Deconstruction of opening scene: Oculus (2013)

Oculus opening scene (2013)

Oculus opening scene clip from YT:

Titles

This scene includes the opening titles, labelling all the productions involved in filming involving: Relativity, BH productions and Intrepid pictures. 

Genre

Through this short clip we are able to establish what genre the movie is. This is due to the dark color scheme, creating fear as we can't see much of the actions and relating to common conventions of supernatural horrors as the supernatural occurrences often happen at night. As well as this the scene is set in a house, where most Supernatural horrors take place to strike fear into the audience as it is in a setting that is person and could happen to the viewers.

Typography:

The title of the movie: Oculus is displayed on a black screen and is a simple sans serif text. It looks as if clouds of smoke is animated over the text to make it look eerie. This further highlights suspense. 

Music

diegetic breathing:

On this close up of the girl we can hear her breathing heavily. This represents her fear at the events unknown to the audience and shows that what she is doing is risk taking and fearful. This builds tension as the audience wonders what is making her so scared. 

diegetic Creaking door:

This is a common convention of supernatural horrors, as it signifies the entrance of the unknown. In this scene the girl is sneaking through a door as the non-diegetic background music is quite and low contrasting the sound of the door opening, exaggerating the door creak to make it seem louder and the audience worry about the girl getting caught.

non-diegetic music:

The non diegetic string music in the background starts of low, building tension, however, as they run to the door it becomes fast paced symbolizing the beat of their hearts as they race to the door. The music ends as the trigger on the gun is pulled suggesting the end of a life.

Representation

In this scene the two children are shown to be the victims as they fail at getting to the door in time and are caught by the man who raises a gun to their head. A common conventions of horrors is that it is often children who are the victims, as we see them as innocent and vulnerable and thus making a bigger impact if they get hurt due to us feeling sorry for them.