The Woman In Black

Woman in black opening scene

The opening scene in woman in black is very gloomy, and dark, there is also a lot of different camera angles. They are making the audience feel nervous, and anticipating the rest of the film.

At the start of the opening scene there is an extreme close up of a little pretending to tip tea into a cup and then a switch to another extreme close up of the girl giving it to the doll. As they are using teapots and cups and saucers, it gives the impression that the film is set in England as that is what country’s represent England with and also that’s where teapots are made, so it says to the audience that it is an English film set somewhere in England.

We also know that the film is trying to represent the time period, as we see that the dolls are very old fashioned and antique in our period of time, it shows that they are wanting the audience to go back to the 1930’s as all dolls are said to be antique if they are below the 1930’s. So this gives the impression to the audience that the film is going to be in the early 1930’s, late 1920’s. We can also tell from the clothing that the children are wearing that is set back in time too.

As the film has the extreme close up of the teapot and cup, the music is very low, slow motioned and has a very funeral sound to it because of the bells, its gives the effect to the audience that it is going to be a film about death, so we get to know that the film is a in the horror/thriller genre. We also get a mid-shot of the three girls turning around and staring at nothing, this gives the effect to the audience that there is also going to be so paranormal features within the film, such as ghosts, as the girls once they’ve stared at nothing, look at the window start walking and crushing their dolls on the way, which tells the audience that it has a very hypnotic sense of genre to it too as they walk out of the window.

When the girls stare at nothing we can tell that there’s a ghost there, which tells the audience that there’s an evil entity present. As the girls have been put in a type of hypnotic state to kill themselves, it makes the audience feel sorry for the children, and make you go against the ghost which makes the audience think of the ghost as the antagonist. It’s the bandit of the film because the entity makes the girls kill themselves; this tells the audience that the ghost is going to go around killing people for some sort of reason that will be shown later on in the film.