Silent Hill Scene 10 : Darkness is coming Analysis

Cast and Credits Director: Cristophe Gans Cast: Radha Mitchell, Laurie Holden, Kim Coates, Jodelle Ferland Characters: Rose da Silva, Cybil Bennett, Anna, Red Pyramid Genre: Horror Music: Soundtrack- Waiting for you (Shf1)

1.Mise-en-scene Setting Costumes Rose Lighting Derelict street Hotel Church Costumes Rose Cybil Anna Dahlia Lighting

2. Semiotics Colours Crows Siren Church

3. Sound (I) Sound can be diegetic or non diegetic. The diegetic sound has a source within the story world and it can be internal or external. Internal diegetic sound comes from inside the mind of a character and is subjective. External diegetic sound has a physical source in the scene; characters and spectators hear it together. Diegetic sound can be either onscreen (source inside the frame) or offscreen ( source outside the frame). The nondiegetic sound is represented as coming from a source outside the story world. The musical score is the most common type of nondiegetic sound. Sound is composed of speech, music and noise or sound effects.

3. Sound (II) In this scene we have both diegetic and nondiegetic sound. The scene contains external diegetic sound composed by the sound of: birds, horn, footsteps, heavy breathing, rain, creature crawling, rock and the dialogue between the 3 characters. The sound of horn and dialogue is both onscreen and offscreen. The rest of the sound that we hear is onscreen. The scene also contains non diegetic sound represented by the music score. Sound is also described by its loudness, pitch and timbre. The pitch represents the frequency of a note determining how high or low it sounds. The timbre is determined by the harmonies of sound. In this scene we have a low pitch, a fluctuation of loudness and somber timbre.

4. Editing (I) Editing can be defined as joining one shot with another. The most common means of joining two shots is the cut. Cuts are perceived as instantaneous changes from one shot to another. The film editor eliminates unwanted footage, usually by discarding all but the best take. She or he joins the desired shots, the end of one to the beginning of another. A fade-out gradually darkens the end of a shot to black, and a fade-in accordingly lightens a shot from black. A dissolve briefly superimposes the end of shot A and the beginning of shot B. In a wipe, shot B replaces shot A by means of a boundary line moving across the screen. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, ‘The Relation of Shot to Shot: Editing’ in Film Art: An Introduction, Eight Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), pp.218-263.

4. Editing (II) The scene we are analyzing has 59 shots. The editing rhythm in this scene is fast paced. Long shots and medium shots predominate over the whole scene. The shots dissolve one into another excepting shot 38 where we have a fade-out and shot 39 where we have a fade-in.

5. Narrative (I) Narration is the process by which the plot presents story information to the spectator. We consider a narrative to be a chain of events in cause – effect relationship occurring in time and space. The set of all the events in a narrative, both the ones explicitly presented and those the viewer infers, constitutes the story. The total world of the story action is sometimes called the film’s diegesis. The term plot is used to describe everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us. The plot includes all the story events that are directly depicted. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, ‘Narrative as a Formal System’ in Film Art: An Introduction, Eight Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), pp.74-109.

5. Narrative (II) Beginning: We see characters running upon hearing the siren. Middle: They get to the church, Rose experiences a flashback. End: Anna is caught by pyramid head and has her skin ripped off. The other 2 main characters escape

References David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, ‘The Shot; Mise en Scene’ in Film Art: An Introduction, Eight Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), pp.112-160. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, ‘Sound in the Cinema’ in Film Art: An Introduction, Eight Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), pp.264-303. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, ‘The Relation of Shot to Shot: Editing’ in Film Art: An Introduction, Eight Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), pp.218-263. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, ‘Narrative as a Formal System’ in Film Art: An Introduction, Eight Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), pp.74-109.