Saw is a slasher / psychological horror film that was released in 2004 and directed by James Wan, produced by Lionsgate Films and twisted pictures.
The opening scene of Saw begins with a man in a bath underwater who wakes up and appears to be in a large, dilapidated bathroom with dirty tiles and rusty pipes everywhere, and blood on the walls. He yells and another man's voice is heard, and the man is revealed later when the lights are turned on. When they're turned on, they find a dead body in a pool of blood in between them, but can't do anything as they're both chained to pipes.
The first few shots are birdseye views, looking down on the man, Adam, in the water that we can only see because of a light that is floating around in it, showing some parts of his face. There is a high angle shot of him as he falls out of the bath, showing that he is the victim and already in a horrible situation.
When the lights are turned on, it shows each row turning on one by one in a low angle back-tracking motion, switching between each row turning on and high angle close-ups of Adam as he is blinded by the bright lights. Many of these shots are handheld to give a sense of it being real to the audience. There are blurry point of view shots from Adam to show that he is adjusting to the lights slowly. We see the next character on the opposite side of the room, and it switches to a blurry point of view shot from his perspective when he sees Adam come to focus. The bathroom is revealed to be much bigger than expected when the camera zooms out and moves away from Adam, then looks down on a corpse in a large blood pool. It then zooms out of the body in a twisting effect which is effective as it tries to make the audience dizzy at the sight of the corpse. It is edited using quick cuts in the sequence of Adam shouting and trying to pull the chain off the pipe to create suspense and a fast-paced scene.
The rusty drainpipes are one of the many things that add to the look of the dilapidated bathroom. Other props include a toilet, a bath, and tiles on the walls with bare patches where the tiles have fallen off. These are all very effective as they establish the setting to be old and abandoned. Another good prop was the body between them on the floor. It already being there when they wake up adds to the mystery of how it got there and why it is there, with a revolver in one hand and a recording device in the other.
The writing at the beginning is a thin serif font, suggesting that their may be a religious aspect as this is a common convention of a horror film that involves religion. It is blue and some of the words are slightly distorted. This is effective because the colour blue can be associated with a cold and gloomy setting, and the distortion is effective because it introduces a supernatural element (it's almost ghostly looking). The writing begins to wave slightly and is matched with a dripping noise, so it becomes evident that the distortion and colour of blue reflect the water that the first character wakes up in.
There are many diegetic sounds like the lights turning on and the rattling of chains. These are effective sounds because they are exaggerated versions of what they would be, however would be difficult to make these louder noises like electricity and we'd have to get them from the internet. Other sounds like water draining down the plughole would be easy to make, but we aren't using any water like sound effects.
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