'Halloween' Analysis - Classwork

'Halloween' Analysis - Classwork

In the top half of this page I drew a graphic sound drawing highlighting all the sound in the opening scene of ‘Halloween’. At the beginning there is just the diegetic sound of the crickets, with the quiet indecipherable sound of the man and woman talking. Then suddenly as the camera begins to move, there is a 2-note high-synthesised violin sound jumping up to the string tremolo, which is a constant throughout. There is then an introduction of piano chords that are repeated and then modulate higher or lower.  There is then the diegetic sound of the draw opening and the knife coming out. There is then the diegetic sounds of the clock ticking followed by the man talking and walking down the stairs and outside. This is subsequently followed by the church bells ringing in the background, which fade out and are overlapped with the sound of the woman humming. During this there is a sharp synthesised violin jump to a higher tremolo. Underneath this the sound of the woman screaming and being stabbed with breathing from ‘Michael’ and a deep distorted bass chord. The piano chords follow on in a descending sequence until the end of the clip.

Under this sound graph, I drew a tension graph highlighting the key scenes throughout, most of this clip is through a point of view shot and this adds suspense because the audience has no idea who is behind the point of view shot. At the beginning there is a moment of equilibrium until the camera pans around as it to be tracking the house where the tension increases a lot. The tension increases further as the figure picks up a knife and walks towards the stairs. There is a slight decrease as the man leaves the house because the figure retreats. Then as the camera walks up the stairs there is an increase in tension and when he puts the mask on there is even more of an increase as the shot is now framed through 2 eyeholes. Then when the boy stabs the girl, there is definite intensity of the suspense. This is highlighted with the image of the naked dead girl and the tension lapses slightly as the figure walks down the stairs but is raised again, to its peak, when the point of view shot ends an the mask is taken off to reveal a little boy behind the murder.