Similar Products - Silent Hill

After watchign silent hill i reviewed some aspects of it that make it an interesting film to watch, especially to the audience i'm targeting for my own production.

I focused on the opening, the first entrance to Silent Hill and the ending.
The production logos had a dark feel to them, the background soo taking over leaving the screen dark. We hear a voice over, which then fades to a house - obviously isolated. There are a series of long shtos and wide shots seeing a woman - the main character - running into a wood at night. This in itself is a very generic horror and thriller convention, as the audience knows it won't end well for the character. She has a slight low angle shot on her, expressing how brave she is, or possibly determined as the continues to supply the only dialogue given to us thus far, calling her daughters name.

Once the scne soon changes, after the thriller episode, it fades to a light mid day scene, the type of colours and setting used you'd expect to see in a romance or feel good film. This expresses the happy family mood. The diaglogue here gives you a lot of hints as to what will happen. Previously the child had said "Silent Hill." And the mother proclaimed to the father, "She said it again." This introduces the name of the film straight away, and it already seems a bad taboo to hear.

The third scene is when we actually see the first appearance of Silent Hill. There's a mid close up of the woman, Rose, in the car, where we can see snow - or what we think is snow - outside. A wide shot shows the car is isolacted, no one around, and one of the doors open. After realising the door is open and her daughter is missing, there are a series of close ups showing the emotion she has, and wide shots as she enters town. It's desolate, with fog surrounding it, so you're only able to make out the edges of a few buildings. Another low angle, mid shot shows her as she progresses into the town, again showing how brave she is.
A dark narrow stairway leads her down into the darkness, with a diagetic noise of a siren signalling. I assume it's diagetic, as she reacts once it starts and looks around her before continuing.
After being plunged into utter darkness she takes out a lighter, creating ambient lighting, showing us where she is, but still holding the mystery adn suspence of what could be around her.

The end scene holds a lot of emotion, as throughout the entire sequence we see the mothe and child together. We see close ups of both, showing the serious face the mother has, and a rather grave face on teh child. As we see shots between their situation and the fathers there is significant differences in colour and lighting. All the way until the end, the mother and child are stuck in a greay, foggy world a big contrast to the bright, sunny house to which the father is in. even when they arrive home, the colour doesn't change, and they never see the father in the seat we were shown previously. This suggests to the audience that they never made it out of the horror of silent Hill, unable to return to their normal happy life.



From this i have found some similarities between the film and my project. both involvea contrast in dangers, and an abandoned setting. In turn, each also involve some sort of monster that goes after the protagonist. After seeing this, i may see the effects of the lighting especially.