Friday, 17 October 2014

Two Scene Film Analysis of ‘The Shining’


Scene 1- Storage room, talking to Delbert Grady

At the beginning of this scene, Jack is sleeping on some bags. These bags are labelled as Holly, holly is prickly leaves that are normally used around Christmas and are very uncomfortable to sit let alone sleep on. But Jack seemed to have slept on it well considering it took him a while to get up to the door, this shows that he didn’t have anything else more comfortable to sleep on because of the fact that he was locked in the food storage locker. But I could also mean that he wanted to look like he felt more pain, because if Wendy was to come back with a doctor then he could look more like the victim than her, this shows that he is thinking more about his strategies and wants to be the better person out of them. Plus instead of having the logo of the holly as green, the director decided to have it red, which doesn’t make much sense since holly leaves are green. This shows that something dangerous could be happening soon, then straight after there is a knock on the door.
When Jack is talking to Delbert Grady, there are a couple of boxes with hidden messages on the side. One of the boxes say Golden Rey, this is important in this scene because there is only two times jack talks to Delbert in the film, first time was the bathroom of the Golden room and now the second time is the food storage with boxes saying Golden Rey surrounding him. Gold is normally used to show how valuable something is, maybe talking to Delbert could be almost precious to him and something that could be keeping him alive from and not vulnerable to his wife. He is also teaching Jack how to “properly” look after his family and these lessons might be valuable to Jack. There also another box next to Golden Rey saying peach slices and pimiento pieces. The story of the caretaker before Jack apparently chopped up his wife and daughters bodies into pieces and these boxes could be predicting the future. Or these boxes could be trying to warn the audience that it has already happened since he is talking to Delbert Grady who was the man who was supposed to do it. Plus they are both written in red which is the colour of blood which is the same as flesh and the blood of the human body what is visible if they were to be sliced into pieces. This is another great use of Mise-En-Scene.
The lighting in this scene was very light compared to most scenes in the movie and showed the whole room quite clearly, there wasn't any use of low-key lighting and used only high-key lighting throughout the scene. The reason they might have used high-key lighting in this horror film was because they wanted to show the audience the whole room and show hidden messages in that specific room. Or try and tell the audience that it isn't a scary scene and shouldn't shock you too much and try and calm down the audience before they get them all tensed up again.


The camera never decided to go in front of jack but always stayed to its back and side when he was awake. This might be because the camera is afraid that it might upset Jack and it doesn't want to do that because Jack is a bit insane and could kill easily without really thinking. The only time it is in front of him is when he is sleeping, where is vulnerable and can’t hurt anyone so it is safe, but when he is awake, the camera doesn't want to get in his way because it isn't as safe.

Scene 2- Come play with us scene, two twins and Danny

In this scene, there are two twin girls standing at Danny saying “come play with us”. As Danny goes round the corner, there is d loud clash sound when he stops and sees the two girls. This makes the audience shocked and they know that these two girls are not friendly and will cause something bad in the film or make the audience shocked/scared. The sound was used to either bring up the tension or to warn the audience about the two girls or something that might happen in the future. This is also used when the camera gets closer to the girls and starts switching to them after being murdered by an axe, this is used to try and scare the audience more than warn them because they use the music at that right point, to use all that tension that has been built up and use a little shock to scare them. After the girls have disappear, so does the loud music, until he start talking to Tony then there is a quiet noise building up tension as if something is going to happen round the corner.
The lighting in this scene is at the minute high-key lighting, but in some parts of the corridor is a bit darker than other parts. For example there are two lights hanging from the ceiling, between them both is the darkest, and between them there is a sign saying exit. The reason why they might have used this was to show that the exit is getting further and further away and there isn’t any point going after it because it is lost in the darkness. But also on the other side of the exit is an alarm, this is also in the darkest patch. This could also mean that if he was in trouble there is no point in causing an alarm because he won’t be able to get to it and no one will then find him, the alarm is also lost in the dark. The exit was used to try and show Danny how to get out and he might have a chance of escaping, but it was written in red so it could also be a trick and lead Danny to his death as well, or there might be danger up ahead if he tries to escape.
The camera using a lot of different techniques in this scene, at the beginning the camera using a tracking shot from far away on Danny go around the corner on his tricycle. This shows that we don’t know as much as Danny when he goes round the corner first, but most of the time we know much more than the audience and their surroundings. This gives us more of a shock because the tension has built up a lot more, we have seen Danny stop but we don’t know why he has stopped, but we will find out when the camera catches up with and goes round the corner as well. It also uses a close up on Danny’s face showing how frightened he is when he sees the girls’ bodies on the floor, this shows his emotion and is almost reflected onto us because some people might feel the same way as well. They also use a mid-shot on the twins to show the girls in more detail and what they are like as well. But before they get closer to the girls, instead of just actually getting closer, they use jump edits to get closer to them until they are close enough. They used this to make the audience jump and scared thinking there might be a jump scare in a minute about to shock them.


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