I don't have my memory stick so im useing this to copy paste at school, pay no attention

Compare how genre and narrative are established in the opening scenes of “Scream” (Wes Craven, 1997) and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)

This essay is a comparison of the opening scenes of “Scream” (Wes Craven, 1997) and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992), and will describe the different ways both films establish genre and narrative. Although the films share the genre of horror, they fall into different sub-genres. “Scream” is a teen slasher and Dracula is a fantasy vampire film. A teen slasher is usually filled with jump-scares and doesn’t usually try to give any psychological scares. There is normally a masked antagonist (Leatherface, Jason, Michael Myers, etc) and attempts to be as realistic as possible to allow us to imagine ourselves as the protagonist. Fantasy horrors focus more on metaphors and psychological scares. They use creatures and settings that could not exist in the real world to allow these metaphorical characters and setting mirror ourselves and the world we live in (Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” is an example of this). Although they are both horrors, this makes them very diverse, as I will now discuss.

The opening title in “Scream” mirrors the actual film quite well. The white text on black background shows the innocence being covered by darkness, and when it changes to red this connotes death, which is indeed what happens to our protagonist, Casey, at the end. The house Casey lives in is a well-lit house with white walls. This shows that the is house safe, unlike the dark outside, however, when Casey gets more panicked and the killer gets more violent, the lighting in the house gets more and more low key. This shows that the house is getting more and more dangerous as time passes on. Inside the white house many small things are red, such as the books on the bookcase; this connotes blood and makes the viewer think of splashes of blood on a pure victim.

In “Dracula”, the background of the sky is generally completely brown or red, and unlike “Scream’s” almost completely white and black backgrounds showing a collision of good and evil, the skies in “Dracula” seem to mirror the dirty and bloodiness of the time, and the dirty and bloodiness of the gothic horror genre at large. In the battle scene that takes place, the warriors are back-lit, making them silhouettes. This makes Dracula look subhuman and powerful as he casually murders all in his path. It also dilutes the horror of war, focusing on Dracula’s power rather than human death. At the end of the battle, Dracula looks up to the sky and says “God be praised, I am victorious!” This is a low angle shot, further demonstrating his power, and half of his face is shaded out, showing his duality of strength in battle to weakness to Elizabeta and how human he is in love and how superhuman he is in power, as he has already shown in the shadowed fight

In “Scream”, Drew Barrymore’s character, Casey, has little makeup, a white jumper and blond hair. All the light, cool and neutral colours show us her innocence, but also her defencelessness, which adds to your sympathy for her. You would normally assume she would die as a demonstration of the killer’s power and determination. However, a close up of Casey’s face appeared on the posters and VHS and DVD covers. Also this is Drew Barrymore, a very popular actress, and one would assume that she would be the main protagonist after narrowly escaping the killer. Wes Craven exploited this assumption as he often does. Wes Craven is not new to unpredictability. He demonstrates it a lot, for example in “Last House on the Left”. Her house is filled with knives, one of which she starts to play with, making her surroundings seem dangerous, and adding more elements and conventions of the genre. There is a shot of the outside of her house with a rope swing slowly creaking. This foreshadows Casey’s death, as she is eventually killed and strung up to the tree. While the killer started out talking rather calmly, he soon changes to a violent tone when he gets revealed for looking in on her. This shows that he is unpredictable, and as such, far more scary. It is later in the film revealed that, despite her previous claims, she does have a boyfriend. Steve, Casey’s boyfriend, is an American football player. This achieves many things, one, the character is obviously muscular if he plays football, meaning that if the killer apprehended and pacified him, he must be extremely strong himself, or very smart in the way of human reaction to that sort of situation. Also, as Steve is an American football player, one must assume that he and Casey are popular pupils. Add to this the fact that Casey has a large house, you can assume that she and her family are quite wealthy. It is always easier for the audience to imagine themselves as someone richer, stronger or more popular than themselves than someone who is lesser, as people don’t like to think that way. The house and phone acts as a barrier from the killer and after Steve is killed, and Casey is promised another round, the killer throws a chair through the window. This illustrates the schizophrenia he has already shown and shatters the barrier between her and the killer. The killer wears a black robe with ripped ends. As black has already established itself to represent fear and danger in this film from the darkness of the night, this makes the killer seem dangerous. It drapes behind him and makes you focus on it rather than his legs, making him look like a ghost, and the mask also mimics that of a conventional ghost, bringing us back to our adolescent fears. The popcorn popping in the bag shows the tension rising and then smokes out the whole kitchen. Different people will interpret this in different ways. Some will think that it is there merely as a way of concealing and shadowing the killer, I feel that it is used to make the killer seem more ghostly, appearing through the fog.

In “Dracula”, Dracula wears some red armour that looks like a bat, that has no skin, just muscle. His hair, and facial hair, is uncut and wild. This makes him look vicious and untameable. The bat-like helmet of his armour foreshadows his turning into a vampire. Though all these things make him seem tough, the muscle makes him feel vulnerable, it is not physical weakness though, it is his love for Elizabeta that makes him weak. In “Scream” they also have the character represented by their clothing, but Casey can only really be represented by the colour of her clothes and how revealing they are. As “Scream” is based in real life and “Dracula” is fantasy, his armour does not have to fit the timeframe, and they can put in more metaphors in to help better understand Dracula’s character, one of the advantages of the fantasy genre. In “Scream” the fear came from Casey or Steve dying, however in “Dracula”, Dracula remorselessly kills many brutally in battle, as was commonplace in those times, and in a fantasy setting. The fear however comes from the immortal torment Dracula must suffer and how he must ruin lives merely to survive himself. In Dracula he immediately shows himself as a powerful man, and when he becomes evil you know he is extremely powerful, however in scream you have little knowledge of how powerful the killer is, he could be weak, he could have a gun, you are not sure until he comes after you.

In the title scenes of “Scream” there are many sounds typical of the horror genre. There are knives slashing, and screaming which should strike fear in many hearts. There is a beating heart that shows the adrenaline from fear and a telephone ringing, that shows that the telephone call in something to be feared. The killer’s voice is deep and sinister, but not so unrealistic and threatening that the audience has to suspend disbelief and that Casey can realistically act flirtatiously towards him. Through the first half of “Scream’s” opening sequence there is no non-diegetic sound. This is because the director wants to make the film feel as realistic as possible. The diegetic sound starts at the disequilibrium (killer asks “I want to know who I’m looking at”, as this is when the audience is already quite immersed and would not realise. Even this is not very much or very loud, just a few notes that don’t seem to fit together. This is because, for a start the true horror hasn’t begun yet, and also because it allows this to subconsciously become normality, so the score can build up. When Steve calls to Casey, begging her not to turn off the patio light, his speech is muffled, this allows you to replace his hard to recognise gargling to your own name, imagining yourself in that situation and making you relate more to Casey, one of the goals of a slasher film.

In the title scene of “Dracula” the only sound is music. This is because the changes of music are very important for the opening scenes of “Dracula”. In the begging there is absolutely no Diegetic sound, a polar opposite to Scream. The narrator talks in a Transylvanian accent. This makes you think that either perhaps he was there to witness this, or perhaps is Dracula himself. The piano is

In Scream, when Casey’s mother tries to call the police and hears Casey dying in the background while the father goes upstairs to look for Casey, there is an extreme tilt and close-up, showing the mother’s confusion and allowing you to see her fear. Casey starts off being shot with high angle shots and walking tall, to show she has the power to hang up and walk away. However, when she starts getting threatened and she finds Steve, she crawls in a foetal position in thjue corner, and gets shot from above. Being in the corner makes her seem trapped, crawling up in the foetal position makes her look small, and being shot from above makes her seem weak. When she gets dragged away by the killer, she is shot from above. She is followed by the camera a lot using tracking which gives the feel of stalking her. When the killer shouts “listen to me you little bitch” the camera tilts to show her confusion. There are many shots of Casey far to one side of the screen, this shows how alone she is. The popcorn has already been mentioned as a metaphor for the tenseness, but it is also shot from a tilted angle, to show confusion

In Dracula, it starts with a low, tilted angle shot of the church, showing it is powerful and not in normality. Then a bird’s eye shot of the cross breaking. Without the obvious metaphor of the cross breaking, the high angle shot also shows its weakness. The high angle shot could also be a god’s eye shot, as he watches Christianity shatter. There is then a close up shot of Dracula to show that he is the hero, and then he is shown next to his wife with the priest in between them. They are next to each other to show their love for each other, and the priest is in between them to show he will get in the way of their love. The priest is in the background and high on his chair. This shows that he is more powerful than they are as he is high up, but not as important as their love, as he is in the background. This also shows that Dracula is Christian. When Dracula is angered, the camera is a bird’s eye view to show his growing distance from god.

In scream, the editing used is continuity editing. This is used because the film wants to feel as realistic as possible, and using continuity editing on top of little non-diegetic sound makes this feel as real as it could be (without sacrificing pacing with the non diegetic sound). Scream also uses juxtaposition with inside shots followed by outside shots. This can be seen as a safety v darkness binary opposition sort of thing, but I feel, although nether are POV shots (apart from possibly the killer’s shots) I see it as through the eyes of the killer to through the eyes of Casey. The shot to the inside are straight and controlled, but many times shots to the outside are shaky. This shows the franticness of Casey against how controlled the killer is, and shows the weakness of the light inside and boldness of the dark outside.

In Dracula the crescent shadow on the map makes it look like the whole place is owned by Muslims. In the film there are many dissolves and wipes, because it is not meant to feel realistic, it is a fantasy. Unlike scream that used only continuity editing to give a feel of realism. However they didn’t use these things just to be unrealistic, every wipe or dissolve mean something. For example, there is a shot of the church, which dissolves to a shot of the cross showing their similarities and making the audience realise the building is a church if they hadn’t already.

Simmilaratys =

Differences = continuity editing/silly shit Dracula did,

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