The Shining

15/12/08
In today’s lesson our objective was to watch “The Shining” as it will contribute ideas to why thrillers differ to horror films. We were asked to analyse certain scenes in the film, whilst explaining how the suspense was built and maintained, we had to monitor all aspects such movement of the actors, eerie soundtracks and the periods of differing editing. As the film concluded, there was a class discussion about particular scenes that highlighted and maintained suspense. A few of the scene that we commented on were the following:
Jack’s  staggering limp – Jack is chasing  Danny down as he tries to kill him with an axe, because of the menacing look on his face and the dragging on Jack’s feet the scene is more intense as we have to continue to watching to see whether Danny is killed or escapes.
The Intro scene – I found this scene thrilling in a different sense, there was minimal action however there was constant weariness because the car being followed through a bird’s eye view this creates a situation of predator and prey. As the story is told straight away you had to wait to see when it was coming which I think is an inspired idea. Finally, as Wendy tries to make conversation with Jack she finds that he has repeatedly written “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” The aftermath of this scene is she realises that Jack is becoming  psychotic as it is also a revelation to us that he was never writing a book as he was kept insisting he was and from here we see a dramatic change in Jack and now feel something bad will happen soon.