Detailed Opening Sequence Analysis

The Woman in Black's opening sequence creates a creepy atmosphere. It does this by using a child like background music as the camera is showing the audience three children playing in a room with dolls and teacups. The music seems to stay the same throughout the beginning but then changes as the three girls start to get up off the floor and walk towards the windows. When the children get to the windows the music becomes louder and slightly faster paced. While the children are walking towards the windows there are sound effects of the children standing on their pot dolls and their teacups. The close up camera shots of these items as they are being stood on gives the audience a sense that they are under some kind of power and cant control what they are doing. We get this feeling as we were just shown the children smiling and playing with these items.

When the children get to the windows there is a close up of their hands opening the latch and then opening the window. As the children open the window there is a creaking sound effect. This tells us that he windows haven’t been opened in a while and also that the house is quite old. The clothing that the children are wearing also tells us that this film is set a while ago. The items that they were playing with also support this.

There are many different camera shots in this sequence. These include wide shots, close ups, medium shots and long shots. There is a shot where it is from someone point of view, but we don’t see who this is. The shot shows us the children looking towards us before they turn to walk towards the windows. This shot gives us a creepy mysterious feel to the film, as we know the children are looking at someone but we have no idea of who it is. The camera then shows us a shot of the windows. This puts us on the edge of our seats as we have a feeling about what is about to happen.

This opening sequence ends with an asynchronous sound of a woman’s scream and then some dialogue of her saying ‘my baby’. This tells the audience that she was a mother to one of the children. After this, the camera zooms out to show the empty room and then there is a close up of one of the pot dolls. This close up effects the audience as pot dolls tends to look scary. This dolls eye is wide open and the camera catches this to give a scary, creepy feel to the audience. As the camera is on a close up of the doll there is a low sound in the music. This tells the audience that something bad has happened. It also adds a feel of suspense and dread. The camera zooms as far out as possible and we see a Black veil and the outline of a side of a face. This is done so that we know that the woman is the reason for the event that has just occurred.