Semiotics - Scream

Semiotics – Scream

Genre

Scream has made the horror genre more engaging to watch by the codes and conventions used. The character is very vulnerable which means open to attack in the first part of the film as she’s alone in her big house. The music and sound had very loud and clear drums banging as tensions were getting more higher as the victim was about to get killed. Simple lighting used to give a cosy and homely atmosphere to show that everything’s seems ok and to give the impression nothing’s going to go wrong as most horrors have dark lighting. The narrative worked well, it’s a game through the phone leading up to the dramatic death. This keeps the viewers interested to see where the phone call was going to lead to as on the phone it seemed a normal conversation asking each-other questions on their favourite scary movie. 

Images

The images at the begging of the film you can see the ‘scream’ font in white as normal but then all of a sudden it turns to red font. This could represent blood and danger. The title itself says a lot about the film the words scream makes you aware of that there will be screaming in the film.

Actions

Mise en scene is used to keep the audience guessing on whom the murderers are. Every-time Drew Barrymore’s character picks up the phone, the mysterious caller threatens to kill her and her boyfriend. Little did she know, her boyfriend was already dead so this is telling the viewers that the killer knows a lot more about her than she imagined. The actions have been thought about very cleverly. You can see how the victim slowly gradually starts to walk slowly around the house to lock each door. As a viewer, it makes you think that you want to rush and quickly lock the doors for her because she’s that slow. Doing what you are supposed to do in horrors is not much of a horror film so they intentionally do it on purpose.

Objects

The phone was used not only through-out the opening scene but through-out the film. This is almost the killer’s game of getting the victim to talk about what their favourite scary movie before they die. The cooker was used to create tension whilst the victims on the phone to the killer. It shows she’s quite ditsy forgetting to turn off the cooker and so the time she got murdered, the house went up in smoke.

Sounds

With sounds, everybody expects knifes slicing into something, hearts beating fast, creaking doors and screams followed by more screams. What you see is what you get. In this particular opening scene when Drew Barrymore’s character is outside getting chased, you can hear frogs, crickets and outside creatures. You can hear sounds of heavy breathing, sobs and gasps; this is showing how hard she is trying to get away and fighting for her life.