The title alone- 'Scream' struck me as a clear indication of genre; having a title of a frightening, unsettling verb almost directly associates with the audience and can be perceived as telling the audience to 'scream' as this film is a horror, and therefore unnerving, or merely the lexis 'scream' is describing a typical and frequent possible occurrence in the film where endangered or threatened characters will 'scream'.
Additional conventions help to reinforce that this movie is a horror, such as the non diegetic sound of a loud, screeching, dramatic siren noise played as the title appears. Also, typical conventions of horror movies can be unsettling phone calls- and Casey receives a phone call directly at the beginning of the film. however, this phone call actually subverted to typical horror movie phone calls as the male on the phone sounded human, making no unsettling noises, and no difficult conversation. Casey is home alone at the beginning of the film and the camera tracks her as she moves around the house, however typically of a horror- the audience continues to await something jumping out, or something seen by the audience but not by our protagonist as she obliviously walks on. another convention that indicates our film is set to scare its audience is the mere idea that the film is initially taking place at night. Night is the more unsettling time of the day for people- connotated with ghouls, Halloween, nocturnal animals, darkness and obscure noises. Just like pathetic fallacy (when peoples feelings can be associated with the weather or inanimate things or animals in literature) the night almost has a link to the darkness of the Grimm reaper in scream, or the dark presence Casey can sense, or even the dark thoughts that are going through her head of what this deranged man is doing.
there is no backing sound in the scene as Casey talks on the phone, possibly to deter the audience from loosing focus on Casey and her conversation. The synchronous diegetic sound keeps us focused on Casey and her phone call and the close up shot used in the beginning of the film too keeps the audience focused on our protagonist. because no other characters are introduced all focus is to Casey, and we begin to see her typical attitude of females in horror movies- generally the typical 'dumb blonde' is in every horror movie and Casey coverts to this by not admitting she has a boyfriend and continuing to talk about her movie likes and dislikes to a complete stranger. however, we see that our main character has more chance of surviving than her boyfriend when she begins to lock the doors after feeling uneasy. With this attitude the audience begin to associate more with Casey and hope for her survival throughout the film, even though typically in horror movies there are few survivors. the idea that Casey is home alone suggests already that she is seen as a responsible adult, however many teens (who are the most common audience for mainstream and slasher horrors) may be able to relate to this as stereo-typically teenagers picture themselves as older and therefore able to use this sense of responsibility to their advantage which may not work out so well, as we see for young Casey in her house alone. and not only this....Casey is in her house alone....but her house itself is isolated, away and alone from any other house too! usually at the start of a movie or scene, establishing shots flaunt the location of a scene or establish relationships with characters and their surroundings however in the opening five minutes for scream we have no idea where Casey's house actually is until a snippet of dialogue between the caller and Casey when she threatens to call the police and the caller responds with 'they will never make it in time' followed by the idea that she is 'miles away from any other house'. this is the only indication we receive of the significant countryside or abandoned location of the films setting. the setting itself is very typical of a horror movie as often the characters have nowhere else to go, nowhere else to hide and nobody to help.
the repetition of the calling makes the audience feel like this is an ongoing plot, an ongoing theme of the film where the characters get the option to answer or not to answer to stay on the phone or not pick up-despite frequent threats. this repetition triggers mild 'jump scares' and agitation from the audience, anticipating what the next call is going to be. The calls are our predominant source of sound in the clip until around 2.53 where a tense high pitched melody begins to play as a non -diegetic tension building sound. this is reinforced when Casey's stove pop corn 'pops' as the attention seems to be taken away from the calls themselves, and the attention turns more to the external issues- how can the reaper see Casey? where is he calling from? how does he know her name?
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