Halloween Opening Sequence

 Halloween was released in 1978 and directed by John Carpenter. It was set in the suburban town of ‘Haddonfield’, in the state of Illinois, USA.

The opening sequence starts with iconic horror music playing over the titles of the studio the film was made in, the colours of the title are red yellow and orange over a black background to give off the illusion of fire relating to the fire within the mans heart and also the fire within a pumpkin. A pumpkin then appears and is also in darkness, the camera then zooms in onto the face of the pumpkin to show the horror of the face in relation to what the film will entail.

Sound bridge of children singing, still with a blank black screen building the tension a caption saying ‘Halloween night 1963’.

                                                                                               

The scene starts with a forward tracking shot going towards a large white suburban house, white being a pure colour suggests that the house is pure. This is ironic as it is revealed that it clearly isn't as the film goes on. A handheld camera is used giving off an edgy feel and a sense of being watched. Only diegetic sounds are heard until a non-diegetic screech is added to add to the uprising tension and mystique, it is jumpy and makes the audience expect something scary to happen, the anticipation makes the scene feel more edgy. 

The whole scene is done in the way of a point of view shot and shows the persons process and vision as he proceeds to kill his sister who could be seen as immoral for going upstairs alone with a boy implying that they were going to have sex. As he draws nearer to committing the murder he picks up a mask and the screen changes to the shape of the mask to continue the sub POV shot. Through the mask we see the girl sitting brushing her messy hair naked and with her bed behind her that looks used, suggesting that the girl had just had sex. When the boy enters the room the girl turns and and around and addresses him as 'Micheal'  is stabbing the girl his vision takes us to the knife to see him thrusting the knife down towards her body, we don’t actually see him stabbing her clearly. 


We then see the murdered view as they leave the house, the opening sequence continues to be shot through a point of view right until the end when the shot reverse tracks away from the boy as he takes off his mask and we finally see that it is the little boy, he if wearing a clowns costume which could mean that he things its all a joke however the serious look on his face suggests otherwise.