Analysis Homework 'The Ring'

View the first 3-5 minutes of any of the films suggested.


How do they establish genre, narrative, character, ideology, through technical and symbolic code?




The Ring- a film based on a young girl who got terribly traumatised by her unruly mother, therefore she seeks revenge to do the same to other people. The film explores many themes, the main one being tragedy. 

In the opening sequence of 'The Ring' we get a real glimpse that the film is aimed at young adults and perhaps an older audience, however we could say it appeals to every audience except  children. I've made my decision based on the seriousness and the atmosphere of the opening sequence. The atmosphere feels gloomy and mysterious therefore this shows that this tension will lead onto something happening, and I'm sure this particular target audience would enjoy this horror type film.


In the first few seconds of the clip, there is a teenage, brunette girl introduced with a petrified facial expression which then creates the tension of the scene and makes the audience believe something is about to happen. Whilst holding the glass of milk we begin to see the girl trembling, which suggests she is scared. Further on a little, there is a close up of her face showing us yet again that something is about to happen. 

She calls out to her friend calling her a 'bitch' thinking she is the one that's turned the tv on so it's just a fuzzy grey screen, so she goes into the living room and turns it off. There is a medium long shot in this part to show us her reaction to the tv being like that and the tv turning off. After this, as she begins to walk away, on a long shot, we see through the window that the tele turns itself back on, this suggests somebody's there and someone or something is about to appear.

After this the camera slowly begins to go towards her face as she is freaking out about the tv, this slow movement of the camera shows us yet again something is about to happen and even the girls beginning to notice something's not quite right.

There's a very tense camera shot when the girl and the TV are close up from a side angle, medium close up. This then begins to make the audience think that something s perhaps behind her at this point, it almost could suggest by not seeing behind her, she is not safe. 

Throughout the clip, the pace of the camera was kept fairly slow, to create a gloomy atmosphere. However, whenever she would hear or see something she would run, and the camera would go towards her fast to let us know something is literally about to happen. This clip used high angle shot on the staircase which went really well with the genre of horror of the film, I thought this because the fact we could not see up the stairs created more tension, as we didn't no what to expect, because the camera didn't allow the audience to see certain things. Throughout the clip, this happened a lot to create the tension. 

When she's upstairs the camera is on a floor shot, capturing her feet as she walked slowly towards the bedroom. This shot allowed the audience to see the blood scattered across the floor in front of her, which gave us a opportunity to know something bad was about to happen, before she even knew. 

She then goes into the bedroom, there is a close up on the tele, and the a quick cut straight back to her petrified face, which then turns into one of the 'little girls victims' quite obviously.

Throughout the clip, there was little colour used and a low key lighting, which portrayed the themes and genre of the film very clearly. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gIuCfnmPQg