The Woman in Black

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z_XetLZlqc&feature=youtu.be&t=12s

The Woman in Black starts out with a close up shot of 2 tea cup sets followed by someone pretending to pour tea into the cups. The next two shots denote a young person feeding the tea to 2 individual dolls – indicating that the first scene is of young children having a tea party with their dolls. The dolls look scary connoting horror and evil, and their designs suggest that this scene is not modern and is from old times. The lighting in this scene is not as bright as you’d expect for a children’s tea party scene. Instead the lighting is more dark and gloomy making this scene more scary and atmospheric. The soundtrack playing in the opening sound is rather eerie and slow paced. This type of sound is commonly found in horror and thriller movies suggesting that the film’s genre could be either of those. When the child pretends to pour tea into the cups, the sound of the tea pot and tea cups toughing is amplifies and make to sound very echoey.

This shot show a three shot of young girls sitting on the floor and playing with their doors.  This shot uses a medium shot to show the audience everything in the scene and the setting. The cloths the children are wearing are dresses that seen they are designs from the late 1900’s – indicating to the audience when this movie is set. The same eerie music playing in the background coupled with the low key lighting gives the audience an uneasy felling and as if something bad is going to happen so the girls. The next two shots are a medium/close up of two girls then the other girl. In both shots, the little girls are seen smiling at each other which make the audience feel worried about them because everything around then and the music hints that something bad is going to happen.

The next is a high angled long shot of the three girls on the floor. This shot type is used to make the girls seem venerable. The girls then simultaneously turn round to face to face the camera, like there is something behind the camera. The expressions on their face suggest that someone is talking to them, and then suddenly they turn their heads round to see behind them. Not being able to hear or see that the girls saw makes the audience feel scared and question who or what was there. As they turn their heads, a shot of the windows appear to indicate to the audience that the girls are looking at the window as well. They then stand up in unison, like that are possessed, and they slowly make their way to the window. Each step they take is synchronized suggesting they could all be under the influence of something unnatural. The next few shots utilities close up shots of a girl dropping the tea cup and two girls stepping on a cup and a doll. These shots are filmed in slow motion which builds up suspense. In these scenes no diegetic or ambient sound is used, only the music in the background is what we can hear. The feeling of not knowing what is happening around in the movie makes the audience feel uneasy and frightened. These play with the audience emotions to make us feel terrified, venerable and weak.

This medium shot denotes the three girls slowly walking to the windows then behind shot to show the girls step onto the window sill as they are about to open the window. A close up shot is used to show a girl opening the window. When opening the window, the sound is also amplified and made echoey - like the teapots. 

The last shot of the girls is a long shot of them jumping out of the window. As they are about to jump out of the window, the music in the background suddenly get louder to build tension then turns silent a few seconds after the girls jumped. This was followed by a loud scream and the words “MY BABY”, which came from outside the house window. Then the camera shows a close up shot of one of the dolls and as the shot was shown, a loud echoey thud/drum sound is played to out emphasis on it. This made the doll seem scarier than it actually was and could also suggest that the dolls were a part of the little girl’s death. The final camera shot was dolly out movement while focusing on the window the girls jumped from.