Wednesday 9 December 2009

Textual Analysis of Mad House

_Textual analysis of Madhouse_

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Here is a film called Madhouse, it has many elements in it that will be
similar to our main task. So we may be using some ideas very close to the ones used in this film. The embedding was disabled for the video but
here is the HTML: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUYcRIC1cYc

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The first shot shows a common phrase used in most family films but it
has been deranged and twisted to off put the audience. The deranged way
in which the film opens shows that it is more likely a horror film than
a family film. The sound used in this first shot is of a young girl
laughing in an evil manor. This is off putting to the audience as
laughing is usually a sign of happiness and joy but the images are quite
different from this common thought. This first shot pans to a long
corridor that looks like it would be in a mental institution. This
relates to the film’s title. It then does a very quick cut to a child in
a washing machine; this is then cut instantly back to the corridor where
the camera continues to walk down it. Lightning then flashes which means
the camera can cut to a woman stood in the corridor looking quite
confused and dazed. This breaks continuity and affects the audience’s
viewings. It then carries on to do more cuts of weird items like babies
being hung with blood out their mouths. This is generally quite a
disturbing and shows the general idea of the film. The sounds through
out the whole intro is a high pitched music that is chilling. This intro
sequences carries on to cuts of people’s faces that are slightly
deformed but not in a natural way, this shows that something in the
house is causing this. The lighting used in this intro is constantly
breaking continuity which does put the user in an uneasy place. At 0:45
the intro shows a body being cut up, this may answer the questions
raised in the audience of how the people in the house had become
deformed. At 1:00 minute a man tries to escape the house and is followed
by people in white suits, this shows that people are not allowed to
escape and gives a feeling of claustrophobia to the audience.