TW - Deconstruction Of 'Saw'

Year Of Release: 2004
Director: James Wan
Budget: $1.2m
Gross/Box Office: $55.2m (USA), £6.6m (UK)

The Saw Franchise is hugely successful, with a wide range of products for their fan base including creating 7 films, 2 video games, many recognizable music scores and 3 amusement park rides. The franchise is so successful that they were able to create a reality television show named Scream Queens in which the winner would win a role in the latest and final film of the series, Saw 3D

The opening sequence is very basic until around 1 minute in, in which we see a character named Adam emerging from underwater. This opening minute is very basic as all we can see is an object floating around in water, with an extreme lack of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound, almost to signify the importance of sound when there is some.

He then procedes to get out of the bath he was placed in, whilst the object, which appears to be a key, goes down the drain as with the water. The room is still in the think of darkness so all we can do is listen to Adam's cries of confusion, until another voice, this time from a man named Lawrence explains the situation to him, before finding a light switch.

The camera then pans across each light as it illuminates, with a heavy bang for each one as it turns on, blinding both men momentarily. the camera zooms out from a mid shot of Lawrence to a possible POV from his perspective, looking at Adam, the camera then looks down to reveal a body, with the skull covered in blood, in the middle of the room. The first real aspect of non-diegetic sound comes into play here as a crashing loud, high pitched noise is played almost to represent both character's crashing realisation that they are in a horrible predicament.

(Adam inside the infamous 'Bathroom')

Quick cuts then show close up of the dead man's bloodied skull, a tape cassette player and a gun, respectively. As both characters try to move forward another quick cut show they are chained to some of the piping system in the bathroom. The opening ends with Adam yelling whilst yanking at the chain around his ankle with more fast paced quick cuts and rising music showing him failing in his attempts, before Lawrence tells him to 'Calm down', although he is almost talking to the audience as well as if to calm their nerves before the rest of the film, and the intricate plot kicks in

One aspect of this opening that we are inspired by is the key use of 2 single props, the gun and the tape player. The fact that there is only 2 props seen in the opening highlights the significance of them, as they both prove pivotal to Adam and Lawrence's futures in the bathroom. The second aspect is the use of mise-en-scene in the sense of the body and the blood and wound that makes it look so realistic. We may have to shoot a short clip in our production that will show the wound, although it is doubtful, so seeing this is helpful as  it will give our group more knowledge on how much of the fake blood to use, the strength of the colour and the thickness, due to how real it looks, which could be argued is a form of verisimilitude.