A horror films target audience is generally those in the age
group 15-25. It is mostly aimed at men as they are more likely to be able to
interact with the characters on screen. Women can interact with those on screen
to but they would tend to react differently.
Horror
is a film genre seeking to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by
playing on the audience's primal fears.Horror films often deal with the viewer's nightmares, hidden fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown. Plots within the horror genre often involve the intrusion of an evil force, event, or personage, commonly of supernatural origin, into the everyday world. Prevalent elements include ghosts, aliens, vampires, werewolves, demons, vicious animals, monsters, zombies, cannibals, and serial killers. Conversely, movies about the supernatural are not necessarily always horrific.
The opening scene of Goodfellas works to quickly set the
tone of the entire film to the audience and gives us some expectations of the film.
This film includes genre conventions of crime fiction, thriller, drama and
biographical film, as it is based on the real life events surrounding the
Lucchese crime family between 1955 and 1980. The opening shot acts as an
establishing shot, tracking a car on its journey down the road at night. The
darkness of the scene sets the mood of suspicious activities so this gets the
audience thinking about what the characters may have been doing. After setting the scene as taking place in New
York in 1970, the next shot is inside the car.
There are 3 characters in the car. Here the primary focus is
on the driver who takes most of the space up on the shot. This signals to the
audience that this character is of great importance to us and the storyline,
and this makes the audience focus on him. This is a short shot, and deals with
the characters reactions to a thumping noise they hear whilst driving. The
costumes of the characters show us they are relatively wealthy or operate in
the business world, as they are wearing suits. This also reinforces the time
the scene is set in to the audience, with the hair styles and costumes clearly
belonging to the past. After speculating on whether the driver hit something or
picked up a flat tire, they come to a conclusion that is not yet revealed to the
audience and decide to pull over.
The next shot is a mid-shot of the characters approaching
the boot of the car. They seem hesitant to open it up as the thumping
continues, with one character pulling a large knife out of his inside jacket as
they do so. This is the moment the audience realises these are not ordinary men,
and perhaps live a violent and criminal life. These suspicions are confirmed
when the boot is opened to reveal a bloodied man tied up with half of his body
in a bag. The man with the knife doesn’t hesitate in violently stabbing the man
repeatedly after showing annoyance at the man still being alive. This shows the
audience the violence these men may impose, but also shows they must be
experienced in criminal activities as they were calm and controlled on the car
journey even though they thought they had a dead body in the boot. After the
repeated stabbing another one of the characters pulls out a gun and shoots the
man 4 times to ensure his death. This suggests a certain air of professionalism
in what they do.
The final shot of the scene starts off as a mid-shot of the
driver before zooming in to a close-up shot. A narrator says "as far back
as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster." This dialogue
suggests the "gangsters" of the shot enjoy what they do. This gives
us a lot of information on these characters. Clearly they have no morals or
fear of the law and are more than likely impulsive, unpredictable characters as
they must be slightly crazy to treat such a bad crime so lightly. We can assume
this is the driver speaking as the shot remains still on his face for a long
period of time whilst the narrator talks and the opening music kicks in. The
music that begins seems to treat the darkness of the scene with a feeling of
levity.
