Deconstruction of Camera Angles in an Opening Scene

Camera Angles in Halloween

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELF1DCf1ChA

Halloween is a slasher film from 1978, directed by John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis. It is the first instalment from the Halloween franchise.

The film is set in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois and the opening scene is Halloween 1963. In the film, Michael Myers escapes form a psychiatric hospital 15 years after killing his sister and stalks a girl called Laurie Strode and her friends. His psychiatrist then suspects what Michael is doing and follows him to Haddonfield to stop him form killing anyone.

• An establishing shot at the start of the opening scene shows that a house is the location for the opening scene.
• The opening scene is done in one take with a handheld camera, first it pans across the side of a house showing pumpkins which explicitly show that it is Halloween. 
• it is all done in a point of view shot from the killer's perspective, which we could use for some of the shots in our own opening scene. The use of a point of view shot with no editing makes it seem more realistic and also more dramatic for the viewers. Also, the ambiguity of not knowing who the person is creates tension and mystery in the scene.
• The pan stops at a window which shows a medium long shot of two teenagers kissing on a sofa, then when they run upstairs there is  a quick pan from left to right which reinforces the idea that the shot is a point of view shot.
• Next, the point of view shot pans across back to the front of the house where the killer looks up at the window, where it can be presumed that it is where the two teenagers are.
• The handheld camera then moves across to an open door where the killer walks into a dark kitchen, turns the light on and gets a large knife out of a drawer, hinting to the audience that there is going to be a murder
• The handheld camera moves slowly through the house so that viewers can see the inside of the house. A medium shot reveals a rocking chair in the corner of a room which is often shown in horror films to create a sense of fear in the viewers.
• A high angle shot shows the teenage boy coming down the stairs, making the teenager seem more important than the killer. This could be a hint to the fact that the killer is a young boy.
• The lighting changes from completely dark to dim lighting as the killer goes upstairs which is to allow the viewers to see what is about to happen
• There is a close up of a clown mask on the floor, which the killer then puts on his face. When he puts it on the shot is darkened around where the clown mask would affect his eyesight. We could use this in our opening scene when we do point of view shots from our killer when she has the sack on.
• The killer walks into the room and shows a medium shot of the teenage girl brushing her hair and the camera slowly gets closer to her until it becomes a close up shot and the girl turns around and sees the killer. There are then more close ups as the killer gets closer to the girl while stabbing her, then there is a conventional shot of the knife being stabbed into the woman but only showing his hand and not her body. We could use this as inspiration for the murder at the end of our opening scene.
• A medium shot reveals the girl lying naked on the floor, showing her to be powerless and vulnerable and also conforming to the conventions that the 'slut' dies first in horror films.
• The killer then quickly leaves the house, while still wearing the clown mask. WHen he gets out, the camera changes from a handheld point of view shot to a medium shot which zooms out, showing the mask being taken off the boy, revealing that he is young, which subverts the common conventions of killers in horror films.

Watching this and analysing the different camera angles made me realise how many camera angles we're going to need in our opening scene. This deconstruction has definitely helped me to understand how camera angles can affect the effectiveness of the scene.