KS: Film Opening Analysis: Dawn of the Dead

http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/06/30/dawn-of-the-dead/


Dawn of the Dead (Synder, 2004)

Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 horror remake of George A. Romero's 1978 film of the same name. The remake and original both depict a handful of human survivors living in a shopping mall surrounded by swarms of zombies, but the details differ significantly, a traditional horror/thriller genre cross.

Media Audience

Targeted to those who enjoy traditonal horror and thriller films with action and drama traits, a wide audience market, particularly audiences who enjoy unsettling movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust and horror from viewers. Also films that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres. Horrors also frequently overlap with the thriller genre with the particular psychological thriller subgenre designed to challenge the audience and make them think of alternative viewpoints. Although a good deal of it is about the supernatural, if some films contain a plot about morbidity, serial killers, a disease/virus outbreak and surrealism, they may be termed "horror."

The film is particularly enigmatic with the horrifing images of dead faces and blood. The voice over with the parituclar words of 'violence' and 'spreading' allows the audience to create a direct reading of the sequence of a crime and its deathly consequences. With the imagery edited to create an authentic news line feel with the characters body language very rushed uneasy and terrified, and with the use of mixed volume screams the probable reading of the text is an attack on a town and the presentation of its effects on the news headlines. 


The flashes of faces may be the victims of the attack, however this may be interpretted as the possessed killer. Ultimately the sequence shows a cities distruption but the open text allows the audience to create their own reasons by the killings and the frantic characters. The use of film footage allows the audience to be placed directly in the narrative from the point of view of an onlooker. I personally interpret the opening sequence as a plague over the city turning the towns people into aggressive and cannablistic creatures, with the use of blood, and the gun iconography of killings. The voice over and the news film footage emphasises the great effects of the disruption and the shows its  uncontorllable effects. I do not think my age, gender and backgound has influenced how I have interpreted this clip as it does not truly reveal the storyline just provides hints of the horror and thriller traits and the killings which will later be revealed. The film footage and voice over has direct speech to reveal what has happened so the audience doesn't have to come to their own conclusions.


Representation & Ideology 
Many social groups are presented in the opening sequence as minor characters. Firstly the working class newsreader is presented not as the typical professional, structured intelligent man but a distressed nervous character due to the uncontrollable actions the town is going through. The opening image maybe interpretted as the lower working class worshipping or working for a leader with hundeds of people lined up simultaneously bowing. Similarly the president character does not represent traditional confident and powerful but an unsure man.


The opening sequence presents dominant ideologies of the powerful army and the religious safe guard provided when the worlds sanity dissolves. However there are also progressive ideologies challenging dominant structures in society of male killers walking around shooting and killing innocent victims and the outdated residual ideology of the presidents lack of control over extreme situations but instead observing the effects, acting slow to save the situation.


The text does conform to the characteristics of the genre with traditional stock characters of the killer, ususally men and the marganalised victims. The proffestional characters conform to the more action/thriller genre, whereas usual horror films revolve around the killer and those he/she is tormenting, and the tradtitional family reactions to the behavior. Semiotics of the film footage flashes acts as a framework to contsruct the representation of the plagued city, whereas the blood was central through the opening of 'Sweeney Todd' to create a horror feel. Here the voice over and flashed imagery creates a thriller sense with the president semiotic controlling the opening used to contrast the lack of control over the mad city.

Narrative
The narrative is contructed to reveal the uncontrollable city as an effect of plagued mentalists. The audience is postitioned with the effects, and then are revealed to the events before and after the change in the lifestyle. The opening is made up of a series of flashes, cutting from news videos, to film footage, to clips of president speeches. The sequence is driven by the reactions of the powerful president characters to reveal there feelings followed but a jump cut to the towns situations so the audience understands the extent of the panic they are feeling. The flashes of the bloody close up face is repeated throughout the sequence to position the audience with the victims and remind them of the effects of the killing. The audience is able to identify with the minor victim characters running around the town in mayhem as they can imagine how they must feel, as normal middle class lives distrupted, and allows them to be able to simpathise both with those marganalized characters but also the lack of control and fear they all feel. 


The major themes in the narrative revolve around the following

• The victim characters, presented as frantic marganalised townsmen whos world is turned upside down and now terrifying, evident through their hurried body language and their screams of digetic sounds
• The killers and plague of mental people, the audience is presented with a killer with gun iconography dressed traditionally in all black
• The lack of control from proffesional people in society, including the unsurity of the president and news readers, through their facial expressions
• The deaths and the destruction, the close up shots of the faces covered in blood in distressed faces emphasise the horror feel to the opening.

Tension is increased by many ways in the opening sequence of 'Dawn of the Dead'. Firstly both the music and the cutting rate increases, both in tempo and in cuts to intensify the scene and create a dramatical climax. Sound is cleverly used with a punchy and jarry sound bridge of a low volume played throughout the clip with a louder mix of characters speech, to underline their panic and fear. Tension is remained by repeatedly flashing back to original imagery and using similar clips but of increased terror, for example we see the news reader throughout the opening, he is least calm in the ending with his facial expressions clearly presenting his unsurity on the situation. The harsh clip of the shooting is revealed near the end of the opening, a technical reveal to ensure the audiences attention is held throughout.