The Ring

• The first shot in this film is an establishing shot of an old creepy house at night, which can create a tense atmonsphere for the audience as there are no other houses around and since the house is all by itself, it is clear something bad is going to happen.

• There is then a zoom shot of two girls in a room, watching a film talking. This is effective as it makes the audience feel safe, so that if something bad was to happen they would not expect it. Also it helps to establish the characters in the first scene. 

• The camera then flicks between the girls in a quick reserve shot to show their conversation about a 'tape that kills you in 7 days.' The effect of the shot reverse shot, is that the audience know who is talking at what time, and also they can see the facial expressions of the characters in order to understand fully how they react to it via their emotions. 

• The zoom shot of the girl talking is effective as what she is saying is supposed to be scary, and by the camera zooming in; it is like the audience straining to hear what she is saying, keeping them on the edge of their seats.

• Throughout the first few minutes, there is a big absence of sound, which is effective at building suspense because the audience are waiting for something loud to happen. For example a bang on the window - as there is no sound, the noise would be enhanced and therefore scare the audience more. As the film goes on, there is a loud sound, which is the phone ringing from downstairs. Because there is such a lack of sound, the phone ringing can be quite scary, as the audience are not used to hearing loud noises.

From analysing the opening of this film, a good technique for our film could be to apply the absence of sound, as this way the audience's suspense is built up as there is nothing else going on to distract their attention so when a loud noise suddenly goes off, the audience are more likely to jump than they would be if there was a lot of sound going on anyway.