Scream (1996) Opening Scene

Scream (1996) Opening Scene Deconstruction

The opening scene to the 1996 original 'Scream' film is five minutes and seventeen seconds. 

The film begins with of course the title, and it uses an eerie almost broken letter font with some of the words missing pieces, but it stays simple with a black background and a white font large font. The sound effects used are diegetic, the sounds of women screaming, and as the screams go on, the font pulses red like blood, as if it directly correlates with the screaming. The next sound effect is a knife hitting something, and then the scream is louder and carries on to the close up of the phone, and just before this happens the font becomes thick red instead of white, and there is a heartbeat throughout.

There is then a close up of an innocent girl who is a young adult. Her voice is sweet, and you can tell by looking at her that she is innocent, and just friendly, which is why when someone dials the wrong number she understands. Yet, the creepy voice calls again, persistent on wanting to talk with the girl. Once she hangs up for the second time, the shot focuses on the sliding doors of the outside, as if 

something is there, but there is no sound to indicate this. The next shot takes place outside, and establishes the location and look of the house that the girl is in.  

The phone dials again, with the creepy voice continuing to try and talk to her. He then traps her into a conversation about scary movies, almost ironic about what they are in. She also takes out a knife, as if that's what she could use to protect herself, but she is completely vulnerable on how she is just innocently talking about scary movies and if she has a boyfriend. The shot is a tracking shot as it takes her back to the living room with books on the shelf and the TV on standby. When, the creepy voice says something that makes her freeze. "I want to know who I'm looking at." It could be implied that he meant to say something else, but the confidence in his voice is chilling to know that he is telling the truth, and when the woman get's scared there is a closeup to show her fear, and there is a diegetic  sound of strings being plucked at the realization. There is then a non-diegetic sound of a dog barking, as if they have seen an intruder, 

The next shot is a medium shot, and then the editing shows her turning on lights outside on the patio and then locking the door as if she is superstitious that he is calling from outside,

When she hangs up, he calls again, and she curses because she knows who it is. The tracking shot shows her pacing quicker in fear as she hangs up and then gets another call, and threatened by the creepy voice sounding more perverted while he talks about playing a game where he will gut her like a fish, and calls her  blondie. Confirming that he can see her, and within the scenes her talks there is a faint diegetic harp strings, until he says threats, and then you can hear drums. 

She begins to freak out, shouting down the phone about him leaving or her boyfriend will hurt him. This of course has no effect on the disturbing and tormenting voice that tortures her with constant phone calls and ringing the door bell. There is a steady string of notes as the tension rises and rises until he tells her the name of her boyfriend, and the shot goes into a closeup as there is a loud drum beat and then silence, with another strong drum beat every few seconds, until the clip ends.

This is a very effective opening scene, as it adds a lot of tension right from the beginning with implications on what is going to happen. They are very subtle, with the screaming and stab sound in the title, to the close up of the outside and the dark patio door, to her pulling out a knife and putting it away. What adds great tension to this scene is that you cannot see the voice coming from the phone, and it is a great  horror element to not know what is the thing causing all of this, because putting a face to this tension would ruin it greatly.