Opening scene Analysis-Miss Georgiou

Opening Scene Analysis
11.10.2013
Vasil Nikolov

Movies have always had an opening scene. The purpose of the opening scene is very important as it defines what the genre of the movie is, what might happen in the begining and create a ball of suspence and enigmas, in order to intrigue the audience to continue to watch in order to find out why the killer killed the person; who he is or what happens to him.

The film which one will analyse is called Halloween. It is a 1978 film by John Carpenter. It has been set in Haddonfield, Illinois, USA which is a fictional town, celebrating Halloween. It follows a psycho murderer who was institutionalised since the killing of his sister at a young age escaping, and going back to his home. It is here that he falls for a girl and stalks a girl while his doctor chases him to stop him and put him back in the asylumn. 

On the opening credits, the camera zooms, slowly into the pumpkin. The pumpkin is a symbol of Halloween in itself and people crave scary fasces in them in order to scare the dead back to the place from where they came. This is significant to the film as the killer could mix with the other children and pretend that he is celebrating the evening. It is also counted as a convection of a thriller movie as during halloween, "ghosts" start to appear on the streets. 

The camera also starts to pan into the house in order to set the scene of where the action is going to take place during the opening sequence. Also by doing the audience is shown that the horror has been moved to a suburban area which isn't normally done. Near the end of the scene, the audience is shown the setting again, this is done when the camera zooms out on the boy Michael and his parents to then go into a crane shot, in order for the audience to see more of the street. 

Throughout this scene, the audience is seeing everything that happens from the point of view of the character. By doing this the viewer doesn't know who this person is, that has been watching the couple. This then keeps the audience in suspense as all they can do is watch. When the light goes off upstairs, the mysterious character looks as if he is moving quicker. This builds more tension as one would not know what's going to happen, however once the first murder is over, Michael the young boy is shown to be the killer. 

 During the sequence, the screen starts to fade black and  into a caption screen. It reads 'Haddonfield, Illinois', which is how the audience learns the setting of the film. In this case it's a n American Town. 'Halloween Night' also shows up on the black background, as it gives the audience, the time frame of when the action has happened.
the audience will assume from the black screen,  that this movie is going to be dark, as it is conventional for a thriller film to use black colour due to it giving the connotation of death to the audience. By having the titles going from yellow to red, it suggests that there is going to be a lot blood and danger, which is bound to be included in a thriller film in order to shock the audience.

The dialogue that is used during the opening sequence is 'We are alone aren't we?'. This is conventional for a thriller movie, as it makes the audience wonder if anything will happen, or if the characters are just afraid because its dark. This sequence would also create the normal enigma, as the audience would be intrigued to know how the story will evolve.


Incidental music is also used by arriving in the form of a high pitched piece, which starts-off loud and then gradually gets quieter as the clock starts to chime loudly. The music suggests that something bad is coming and on top of the clock chiming, the audience would be able to see that time is running out for the pretty girl that can be heard singing happily to herself. By hearing this, the audience starts to build a warm feeling towards her as she looks innocent. However they would also start to pitty her, as she is ggoing to become a victim to the killer.


Throughout this sequence, the audience would hear the heavy breathing of the murderer. This would remind them, that they are watching the story unfold through the eyes of the killer. This adds to the suspense of the scene, as the breathing of the killer gets deeper and deeper as he reaches the room of the girl. This is where more dialogue is included and the girl says the name of the killer. At this point, the audience realises tha the killer is the girl`s little brother. This in turn would make the audience confused as they would question why, the boy killed his pretty sister. Also there will be an enigma as the audience would then want to find out why did he kill her.


From the opening sequence, props have been seen as a kitchen knife. The audience would then think that there may be a murder that is about to happen. They would also ask themseves who will be killed as there is a boy accompanying the girl. 
A clown mask would then becomes obvious as in the opening, the audience would see that the teenage boy picks it up a clown mask off the floor. it is then later seen again when the 'murderer' goes upstairs and picks it up off the floor of the room. By using the mask, the killers identity is hidden and the audience would then wonder whether they will find out who the person is. 

The family itself is shown as a standard middle class family. this can be seen from the car parked at the edge of the driveway and the fact that Michael's mother is wearing a fur coat, which tends to be expensive and his father is wearing a suit. Michael`s character was then shown to be wearing a clown costume. This shows the common tradition of wearing a costume in order to go around houses in order to scare the ocupants in return for delicious sweets. It could also symbolise a fear as some people are scared of clowns.