Horror opening: Mise-en-scene Analysis

Mise-en-scene analysis: The Women in Black

When analysing mise-en-scene we say what can we see and the start of the film we see three girls in their bedroom who then end up jumping out of the windows.

It begins where the girls are having a little tea party between them with their dolls. Then all of sudden they look into the corner of the room and then stand up. They drop everything the dolls, tea cups etc... and slowly start to walk towards the windows, the camera moves to the windows then back onto the girls and it shows an extreme-close-up of the girls opening the windows before jumping to their death. 

Now this scene can be viewed in different ways. Firstly you can interpret the woman in black as an evil witch as she may have gone into the room to posses the girls which has made them jump to their death. Secondly , By looking at the dresses and the colour of the dresses that the girls are wearing we can infer that the girls are innocent and are being targeted for no reason. 

Another factor we look at when analysing mise-en-scene is the characters facial expressions and their body language. At the beginning of the opening scene we see that the girls are very happy and are having fun with their 'tea party' but then suddenly their expressions change as soon as they look into the corner of the room. They look into the corner and then turn around and look straight for the window and then when we see a close up of their faces we see that there is no expression at all and there body language changes from the beginning also.

                                                                                                                                      

So as you can see when comparing the two images the body language and expressions change dramatically. The fist image promotes happiness between the girls whereas the second image i feel shows the girls are quite timid. They look as though they are not sure what is going in and they are showing a lack of courage and character like they were at the beginning. To add to this point it could also be said that the seriousness increases between the two cuts, this creates more tension in the scene as the audience feel scared and tense as they are not sure what the girls are going to do and this could foreshadow what could happen to other children that appear later on in the film.

The colour of the room can tell us that the house the girls are in is an old house and gives us the impression that there is no liveliness around the house. When we look at the second picture of the girls we can see that the room is very dark which gives the audience a gloomy feeling of the room and out of the shot we can see that there is a glowing light. This can give us the impression that there is something that is possessing the girls.