Analysing the opening scene of ‘The Exorcist’

Analysing the opening scene of ‘The Exorcist’:

At the very start of the clip, the ‘Warner Home Videos’ logo appears in bright colours, with non-diegetic music over the top, the music is high pitched and light. The logo then disappears and then reappears but in black and white, this symbolises that the genre of the film is going to be horror, as the colouring of black and white comes across as sinister. At this point there is no music and is just silence.

The logo then fades out into a black screen for a few seconds, then slowly a shot of a house is shown. The shot is a low angle shot, showing the significance of the house. The shot is an establishing shot, which gives the audience the impression that the house is one of the main settings of the film.

The camera is held on the house for a few seconds without any action, then suddenly a light turns off. This shows that audience there is something or someone in the house, however they’re not yet introduced to the character. This creates an enigma for the audience as they don’t know how the light was turned off because there wasn’t even a silhouette of a figure. The sky is dark and there is the outline of a tree within the shot.

The shot then pans around to view street lights and cars driving past. From the first shot, the audience could think that the house was standing in isolation, but when the camera pans around, it shows that it is not. The shot then views a couple walking away from the camera and some cars driving past.

The shot then fades into another close up shot of a statue of the Virgin Mary, it is a shallow focus, as the background is blurry, and the background is made up of blurred colours, of white, red and golden yellow. The shot then cuts to a black screen with opening text of actors and film producers in a red text. The non-diegetic music throughout is soft but high pitched and rough.

There is then a shot of a big sun in the sky, if fades from black and white into rick yellows, oranges and reds. The shot is a long shot which is held for a few seconds to build tension as the audience don’t know what is going on. This also creates enigma, as the audience would see that, the sun that is shown wouldn’t be in the same place as the first shot of the house. Therefore meaning that the scene as not only changed time of day but also changed country.

The non-diegetic music is cultural music, which helps to set the scene of the film for this scene.