Case Study 1: 28 Days Later

I have conducted research on two different opening to horror films in order to find the macro and micro conventions that are most effective.

Micro features -
The opening shot shows an extreme close up of a man's eye who has just woken up from a comba. There is a high angle shot in the crash room to show that the place is isolated. The man then walks through the hosiptal to find out it is deserted, there is equiptment all over the place and the pepsi machine is everywhere. We hear a non diagetic sound in the form of music, this created more tension just as we are getting into the film. The cuts get quicker as the music gets more frantic. There are loads of close up shots of the man to show that he is confused and alone. An establisging shot of London city is shown so the audience can relate to the setting and see how deserted the streets are, we can see this by phones handing off the hooks, over turned chairs, souvenirs over the floor and no person about. A high angle shot is used here to show how isolated the protagonist is. The lighting is natural because it is taken place in the day. The streets are silent but is interrupted when an on screen diagetic sound is used when a car alarm goes off. The scene moves on to the protagonist entering a chursh, we hear a diagetic sound of the man talking and his voice echoing, showing how empty and quiet the church is. There is a long shot used when we descover zombies rising of the grounds, who then chase the protagonist out of the church.

Macro features -
Normal life has been disrupted because there has been a virus outbreak and everyone has been turned into zombies. The part of the narrative hook is to find out how he is going to survive in a world full of zombies. Throughout the scene we only see one main character who is introduced by coming out of a comba in a isolated hospital in London, he is clueless of what is going on and he walks the deserted streets until the scene where he enters a church full of zambies. We link this scene up as being a horror scene, from when we see the zombies and the deserted streets on London. The iconography in this horror film is thered gurgling eyes of the zombies looking for salvation. The horror really begings when the protagonist enters the church and we realise the theme of the film is good vs evil and normal vs adnormal. The place is full of virsue and illness, this links back to the apocalypse sub-genre.