Z.S Techinal analysis of an openng sequence. The Curse (Noroi,2005)

0:00 - 0:13 To open the scene a white background is shown and black text appears on the screen to tell the basic story of the film.

0:13 - 0:23 This then slowly fades into black and white text appears. This effect of black against white and white against black gives the idea of good and evil, which is predominantly what horror films evolve around, evil against good. It also represents the idea of "ying and yang" which is typical in Japanese culture.The cutting rate between these two frames are very slow to create a dramatic effect.

0:23 - 0:33 A mysterious musical chord is played and suddenly the black background and white text is switched to a low angle shot of some stairs in a town with a woman walking down towards the camera. When the shot switches we also see and hear the loud noise of a train in the background. This may suggest to the audience that it is a busy and noisy place. The loud noises are layered which is helping to build atmosphere in the scene.

There are other people in the scene but walking away from the camera. The woman is also in the centre of the shot so it would be fair to assume at this point in time that she is an important character.

The audience are now aware of the location as all of the characters which have walked past the camera are Japanese and in casual wear. There are loud noises and trains and the woman walking towards the camera appears to be carrying a shopping bag. Now the audience know that it is being set in a bus Japanese town they can look for other ideas and create more important enigma's such as what is the significance of this woman?

0:33 - 0:40 It cuts again to the black background with white script, There are two shots of this text both lasting for around four seconds each. The text so far has been in Japanese but it seems that it has been the directors way of introducing the story without the use of dialogue which is very popular in many psychological horrors.

0:40 - 0:51 The camera then cuts to a small path where the woman featured earlier walks round a corner and towards the camera. There is nine seconds of her walking towards the camera and at this point a piano in minor key starts to play some twinkling notes which seem rather melancholy and allow the audience to feel sadness or sympathy for a certain character.

0:51 - 0:54 Once again the shot cuts to the black and white script to futher explain the story.

0:54 - 1:01 The next shot is a low angle shot of a plant leaf, this goes out of focus for a few seconds and within the five seconds shot it focuses back in and the audience briefly see a spider web, this is enough time to create an enigma but this shot is quickly replaced yet again by more text.

1:08 - 1:13 Then there is a quick cut to another low angle shot of a house. All of these shots suggest that it is still the house of the woman featured at the beginning. The house appears to be normal, but the audience are already aware of the film genre so are now starting to question what is wrong with the woman or the house, are either of them cursed?

1:13 - 1:21 Again this shot is quickly replaced by text so as not to give away too much of the plot too quickly and to build tension. At this point another layer of music is added to the backing track, this time violins are added, which helps add to the melancholy tone so far.

1:21 - 1:32 The piano music has started again and this time the shot is significantly different to the others. It is now a high angle shot of the woman walking on the path below the camera.

The camera appears to be at a point of view shot from a person watching the woman from their balcony. The fact that it is a high angle shot is making the woman look weak and is giving us power over her. There is a quiet noise of a cat and the woman stops walking and looks up to where the camera is. The woman appears to be intrigued by the house and walks a few paces towards it and peers over the fence.

1:32 - 1:36 Once again this shot is only a few seconds and is then switched to text.

1:36 - 1:49 The next shot we appear to be behind the woman and looking up at the house, there is another meow from the cat and the woman walks away from the camera. After the woman walks away from the camera there is another ten seconds of filming the empty balcony from the ground. Here the audience expect to see something or someone because the earlier shot from the balcony would suggest that we were someone's point of view looking down.

So far the screen time has been taken up by this middle aged Japanese woman, who appears to be perfectly normal. The fact that she is a woman tells the audience that she is weak and defensless, to some degree she is also seen as innocent before we are told much about her.

The high angle shot used from the balcony also reinforces the idea that she is weak and is not able to defend herself against whatever monster this film will feature.

This opening will be easy to replicate as not many special effects have been used and there are no high budget settings although it is still effective because the audience are able to identify with the settings making it seem more real. I particularly liked the blurred image of the plant and then focusing in on the spider. Although it does not seem scary the image created an enigma and kept the audience engaged for the next shot.