Friday the Thirteenth (2009) Camera Angles

Friday the 13th Camera Angles

The reboot of Friday the 13th in 2009 is set in present day, but the opening scene and it's camera angles show the origin story, leaving no mystery to the story that will take place in the present. The filter used is black and white, and this is to clearly show that it is the past. It also establishes this by telling us the location and date of the scene, which is June 13th 1980. The first shot shows the wooden sign 'Crystal Lake Camp', showing us where the location is. It is a closeup, and we can see the black letters written on the torn wooden sign. This is a good establishing shot, as it shows the eeriness of this camp site, and tells us just where it is located, in the middle of the woods. the perfect place for a hunter to stalk his prey. In the shots there is rain and lightning, a storm is a conform in a horror, as the it traps the characters in an environment that they cannot control, So the heavy rain, thunder and lightning adds more drama to the scene. All sounds are cut when a name appears on the screen, as if to give the audience some quick time to prepare themselves for what will happen next. The most common shot used in the opening is a mid shot, as the girl who is limping holds her stomach and you cannot see her legs. 

There is a long shot, where it is hard to see because of the black and white, but we get the sense that she is running because she is being chased and hunted through the forest like environment, with the trees, mud and lake all in her path. 

The lack of diegetic sound in this scene makes it rather boring, so if our group was to ever do a flashback scene, we would use diegetic music to make the scene more interesting, because this flashback is not engaging, and the filter on the black and white is too much and you can barely see what is happening. There is an over the shoulder shot, as the camera pans towards the innocent girl. 

There is then a close up of the crazy woman's head on the floor, where it was hacked clean off, and another high angle shot on the girl running away. This is how the confrontation ends. The decapitated mothers somehow talks to  her son, who was supposed to be dead. A gentle keyboard plays as he picks up her objects, and she narrates what he must do. The opening credits continuing every few seconds. There is closeups of the objects he takes, but the quick pace and the annoying lightning makes it hard to see what is actually happening, 

These camera angles make it easier to know what we would want in our production, because if there was to be a flashback scene we wouldn't want to have lightning effects too bright for the audience to see what is happening, and we would make it known that it was a flashback another way by showing a blur in the corners of the screen instead of a black and white filter, as it makes some things in the shot unknown,