Deconstruction Of The Film 'Scream'

Year of Release: 1996
Director: Wes Craven
Budget: $15m
Profit/Box Office: $103m (USA), $163m (Worldwide)

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The opening scene is 12minutes and 14seconds long, and the film as a whole can be recognized as one of the most successful slasher movies in it's genre. For most of this opening scene, all we see is the girl(Drew Barrymore) named Casey,who is portrayed as a typical scream queen (blonde and busty) talking to the soon to be killer on the phone. This continues until around 3:30 and all we see is the camera literally track her around the house in a mid shot. Key aspects of mise-en-scene are located during this continuous shot, such as when Casey is playing with a set of kitchen knives which further illustrates the type of genre the film is.

Things begin to get strange from here on in and non-diegetic sound is added with a typical horror type score, as well as more fast paced camera action following Casey as she runs around the house, locking the doors.A moment we have used in our film can be seen at 3:55 where the doorbell rings and Casey jumps out her skin. In or production we will use a succession of bangs instead of the doorbell, but we hope it has the same effect as it does in Scream, making not only the character but the audience also jump out of their seats.

Her boyfriend is revealed to be outside tied up and great suspense is built up around the moment where Casey has to save his life, again with an eerie musical score that allows the audience the discomfort of watching as Casey fails in her task; answering a question wrong in the killer's sick mind games.

A first real prop is used at this stage, aside from the telephone, being a garden chair, which is hurled through the window by the killer. There is a split second of silence before it comes crashing through the set of patio doors, with even diegetic sound at a bare minimum. This will replicate our film as we would like to keep the props we use to a bare minimum, in order to show further significance to the ones that are used, such as the music player which is a key aspect in our film.

The popcorn that Casey is making can also be seen as a superb, subtle key aspect as when things begin to go crazy, the popcorn begins to catch fire, leaving a cloud of smoke in the kitchen. Finally when Casey leaves the house in a bid to escape, the isolation of the house is revealed and we can see that there really is no escape. 'We're out in the middle of nowhere', a remark made by the killer at 3:48 is the best way to describe how lonely and far away Casey is from help.