Slasher EG3: Scream (1996)

Scream

Wes Craven (1996)

BBFC 18, MPAA R

Film Opening Length: 

Budget: $14m
UK/US/World Box Office: ?, $103m, $173m
Theatrical Distribution in 16 countries

Production Companies: Woods Entertainment
Distributors: Dimension Films

LINKS:
IMDB, RottenTomatoes (Tomatometer 79%, Audience 79%), BoxOfficeMojo, Wiki

Trailer for 'Scream':
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POSSIBLE INFLUENCE

I really like the main title sequence in this film opening (in this case there is just one title, the main title). I would like to make my main title sequence a lot like this, by making the main title stretch out upwards then stretch inwards. Also, I would like to include the diegetic sounds that are in this main title sequence such as the telephone sounds, the screams and the slams of when the words stretch back inwards sharply/harshly.

TITLES
The title size goes from big to small in bold on a black background, twice once in the colour red then in the colour white. This suggests that the word scream has great significance within the film suggesting that there will be a lot of screaming going on from the characters but also from the audience. Also the colour of which it is being displayed in also connotes bad atmospheres where red can be seen to connate danger and white can be seen to connate ghosts. Within the opening of Scream it is only the films name which is shown which may express how low there budget was in terms of not having a company presenting the film. However it could express how quickly they want to get straight to the action.This is an interesting example of a sans serif font, almost a bubble font, with some elements of the font itself (not just colouring/animation) carrying horror connotations that we'd usually expect from a serif font.  

OPENING SHOT

The opening shot is a close up of a telephone ringing, connoting that this telephone is a major signifier of what the film is about and is going to be an object continuously used throughout the film. The fact that it is not a wireless telephone and that it is quite retro connotes the setting also, that it is set in the 1990's.





IDENTIFYING ANY PROTAGONISTS

The first character is shown in the second shot here, Normally the first character shown would be the main protagonist but in slasher films, the first character shown is usually the 'scream queen/scream king'. Also the fact that she is blonde, is wearing make up and is attractive further connotes that this character is the scream queen.

This shot is an extreme long shot of the house this girl is in. This shot has been used to show that someone had just been sitting on the swing because it is swinging slowly. This creates/builds suspense for the audience.




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This shot is constantly referred back to during the film opening because every time, the popcorn packet seems to be rising even higher. The fact that this shot is referred back to a lot makes the audience feel slowly more tense and scared each time there is a shot of it getting bigger. The rising popcorn foreshadows and connotes how Casey (female character) is feeling as the killer keeps calling her.



SHOT VARIETY

Throughout this film opening there are a variety of shots used such as extreme long shots, close ups, medium close ups, long shots, medium shots and extreme close ups. 
few shots later, the audience sees a close up of the same popcorn cooking but at a dutch angle. The popcorn packet has also expanded a lot more from the shot before of the popcorn. This dutch angle close up shot has been used to create and build even more suspense than the first shot of the popcorn; this is due to the fact that the shots have been getting closer on the popcorn, making the audience even more scared. This shot also makes the audience feel uncomfortable and uneasy as if something really bad is going to happen next.

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SLASHER Auteur Directors

John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, musician, editor and composer. Although Carpenter has worked with various film genres, he is associated most commonly with horror, action and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s.

Most films of Carpenter's career were initially commercial and critical failures, with the notable exceptions of Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981), and Starman (1984). However, many of Carpenter's films from the 1970s and the 1980s have come to be considered as cult classics, and he has been acknowledged as an influential filmmaker. So-called cult classics that Carpenter directed include: Dark Star(1974), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), The Thing (1982), Christine (1983), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Prince of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988) and In the Mouth of Madness (1995).

Carpenter is also notable for having composed or co-composed most of his films' music; some of them are now well-known, with the main theme of Halloween being considered a part of popular culture. He released his first studio album Lost Themes during 2015, and also won a Saturn Award for Best Music for Vampires (1998).

Filmography:
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Wes Craven
Wesley Earl Craven (August 2, 1939 – August 30, 2015) was an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. He was known for his pioneering work in the genre of horror films, particularly slasher films, where his impact on the genre was considered prolific and influential. Due to the success and cultural impact of his works in the horror film genre, Craven has been called the "Master of Horror".

He is best known for creating the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise featuring the Freddy Krueger character, directing the first installment and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and co-writing A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors with Bruce Wagner.

Craven also directed all four films in the Scream series and two films in the Hills Have Eyes series. Some of his other films include The Last House on the Left, The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, Vampire in Brooklyn, and Red Eye.

On August 30, 2015, Craven died of brain cancer at the age of 76 at his home in Los Angeles.

Filmography:
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SLASHER FILMS Timeline

PEEPING TOM

(Mark Powell, 1960)
Budget: £135k
US Box Office: $84k



PSYCHO
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Budget: $806k
US Box Office: $32m
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"Alfred Hitchcock had made his name as the "master of suspense" with brilliant, glossy thrillers like Rear Window and North by Northwest, but Psycho was altogether different - the like of which most cinema-goers had never seen.

With its shocking bursts of violence and provocative sexual explicitness, Psycho tested the strict censorship boundaries of the day as well as audiences' mettle - and it gave Hitchcock the biggest hit of his career.

Awakened to the box office potential of violence and sex, mainstream filmmakers followed suit".

- BBC News

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THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT
(Wes Craven, 1972)
Budget: $90k
US/Worldwide Box Office: $3.1m, $10m


THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
(Tobe Hooper, 1974)
Budget: $300k
US Box Office: $31m

THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE SLASHER GENRE
A quote I found from the book:
'The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies'
By Peter Normanton
"Way Back then, you could scream all you wanted, but it was never going to make them stop, as for an entire decade the doors to the madhouse were thrown open to a plethora of hack and slash killers who were free to slip into school dormitories, college campuses, the woods, shopping malls or for the very unlucky their local neighbourhood. Each was armed with a sharp knife, with blood murder in mind. There never was a decade quite like the eighties".

HALLOWEEN 
(John Carpenter, 1978)
Budget: $300k
US/Worldwide Box Office: $47m, $70m

FRIDAY THE 13TH
(Sean S. Cunningham, 1980)
Budget: $550k
US/Worldwide Box Office: $40m, $60m


PROM NIGHT
(Paul Lynch, 1980)
Budget: $1.5m
US Box Office: $15m

DRESSED TO KILL
(Brian De Palma, 1980)
Budget: $6.5m
US Box Office: $32m

GRADUATION DAY
(Herb Freed, 1981)
Budget: $250k
US Box Office: $2m

THE PROWLER
(Joseph Zito, 1981)
Budget: $1m

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
(Wes Craven, 1984)
Budget: $1.8m
US Box Office: $26.5m



THE DECLINE
There was a decline in the slasher genre between 1985-1995. It's popularity declined substantially but didn't die out completely. There were still many films released within these dates:

1985
The Mutilator, Blood Cult, The Ripper

1986
Killer Party, Mountaintop Motel Massacre, Truth Or Dare?, April Fool's Day,

1987
Blood Rage

The mid-1980s also had a wave of sequels.

THE REVIVAL OF THE SLASHER GENRE
NEW NIGHTMARE
(Wes Craven, 1994)
Budget: $8m
US/Worldwide Box Office: $18m, $20m


SCREAM
(Wes Craven, 1996)
Budget: $14m
US/Worldwide Box Office: $103m, $173m



SCREAM 2
(Wes Craven, 1997)
Budget: $24m
US/Worldwide Box Office: $101m, $172m


I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
(Jim Gillespie, 1997)
Budget: $17m
US Box Office: $72.5m, $125.5m



BRIDE OF CHUCKY
(Ronny Yu, 1998)
Budget: $25m
US/Worldwide Box Office: $32m, $50.6m



URBAN LEGEND
(Jamie Blanks, 1997)
Budget: $14m
US/Worldwide Box Office: $38m, $72.5m



SCREAM 3
(Wes Craven, 2000)
Budget: $40m
US/Worldwide Box Office: $89m, $162m

What Is The SLASHER Genre?

(https://levizilla.wordpress.com/junk/sep2009/) 
This website summarises what the slasher genre is: 

"The slasher genre is a sub-genre of horror. Some critics refer to the genre as 'dead teenager movies', 'slice and dice films' or 'gross out films' (Wong, 2006)". Slasher films do typically contain high levels of violence, blood and gore and almost always contain a group of teenagers as the protagonists. The antagonist is always a killer, who sometimes wears a mask (as in the films 'Halloween' and 'Scream'), is usually a male wearing all dark clothing and kills the protagonists of the film one by one throughout the course of the film. Alfred Hitchcock's Pscycho (1960), is considered to be a slasher film, since it matches the traditional narrative formula of the slasher genre". 

Some of the first films to be defined as slasher films, came ten years later in the mid seventies. The first box office success was John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), a movie about a babysitter and her friends who are stalked, and most of them killed, by an escaped killer named Michael Myers. Similar films began to be produced including Friday the 13th (1980), a film with a narrative similar to Halloween but with much more gruesome death scenes. Prom Night (1980) was another release that kept a similar narrative structure, but added a 'whodunit' aspect to the film. This left the audience to guess the identity of the masked killer. Both films were made on a small budget and were financial successes. This convinced Hollywood Studios to continue creating more and so, the slasher genre was born. 
This website states that many of the slasher films were released in the 1970's (see list below for examples of Slasher films and their release dates). They all had in common a similar narrative - stalking, gruesome killing, .....but Prom Night, according to the website, had a new dimension 'whodunit' which deliberately left the audience in doubt who the masked killer(s) were.  The website informs us that the films were "made on a small budget"; also they were successful in finanancial terms.  For this reason, it is stated that the Hollywood Studios continued to create more.  From this "the slasher genre was born".

This was the start of the slasher genre and from then hundreds of films have been made using the same narrative approach...

First example was Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978). This was a film 


Examples of Slasher films:

1. Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
2. Friday The 13th (Cunningham, 1980)
3. Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
4. Scream (Craven, 1993)
5. Scary Movie (Wayans, 2000)
6. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)
7. The Slumber Party Massacre (Jones, 1982)
8. Babysitter Wanted (Manasseri, 2008)
9. Prom Night (Lynch, 1980)
10. Bride Of Chucky (Yu, 1998)