RS - Sample Opening - Saw (1)

Saw (James Wan, 2004)
Budget: $1.2m
US BO: $55m
UK BO: $6.6m
7 Films in the franchise all one year after each other since 2004
Not a typical slasher because there isn't a murderer, one of the people in the film even says "he's not technically a killer" because the people kill themselves instead

I deconstructed this film opening with Harry Knight

• Fairly recent film, this is suggested by the clothing, the props such as the gun, tape and tape recorder
• American accents of the people can anchor the location, but we never actually see the place or get a name of the place.
• There is also no establishing shot at the beginning to anchor location, so it can be polysemic
• Adam is the first person we see which can signify that he is the hero, he also has brown hair which is usually the last person alive. Adam has scruffy clothing which could signify him being working class. He even says "my apartment is a s*** hole, but now I'm actually in one!" which anchors the thought that he is working class
• Lawrence has blonde hair which usually means they will die, we don't see Lawrence for a few seconds because there are no lights so there are polysemic views for him, could he be the villain? Lawrence has middle class clothing and also says he is a surgeon to anchor the thought
• They both have "roughed" up hair and sweat patches to signify they have been man-handled or something has happened to them without them knowing
• Lawrence is more dominant and tells Adam what to do most of the time maybe because of this social class
• We expect it to be a horror from the start due to the location/setting, the dialogue, the blood, body on the floor and all the props that are in the room
• The gun in the mans hand in the middle of the room can signify violence. The saw can anchor that it is a horror film because it is the weapon used

Techniques we could use from this:

• Unfortunatley this film is a bit too high budget for our opening so it would seem a bit too extreme to do anything like this.
• The mise en scene is too hard to replicate without a budget therefore this film is not too useful for our group