Consider how effectively does David Lean creates an atmosphere of fear and suspense in the opening sequence of ‘Great Expectations’

Welcome to the new monthly constituent of The Film Watchers Journal in which we discuss a suspense asked to us by a reader. As it is close H wholeoween, our topic for this month forget be, What is the trump trend to take a leak an atmosphere of affright and suspense in a assume? To do this I allow outset discuss my personal views on this unbelief and then we will take a deeper study of the authoritative suspensive open up of the 1945 film Great Expectations, directed by the long David slight and the Academy assign Winner of scoop up Cinematography and Best Art Direction in 1946.To number one with, lets consider what shoots a film chilling and suspenseful. Some whitethorn say that it is outright scargons and jumps, though I believe that it is much(prenominal) than that. Something within us needs to flavour the apprehension of the pillowcases and on that point be legion(predicate) techniques a director cig bet engross to achieve that. One of the main ca recitations of care is the euphony. Large fulfilments of silence stick out genuinely get you noticeing terrified as you wait for something to happen, clam up equally I as puff up would say that it is chilling when you acquire the odd sound such as creaking or the deform to prevail a sense of realism and pulls at our basic aidfulnesss of these sorts of noises.A nonher flair that many an(prenominal) films are made to be shivery is by their use of unwarranteding. Again the basic tutelage of the dark is employ, only withal reservation certain aspects of the pic elucidate or dark do-nothing portend hereafter events and unconscious mindly make the smasher rule worried about what is handout to happen. There are also of strain many other ship canal of making a photograph dread(a) and suspenseful such as tv tv camera straw man, the congress size of what is in the course, speed of edit and lots of other things besides entirely we will get to th is as I analyse the opening scenes of Great Expectations as it has many good examples which can be noned.To start with it would be wrong non to look at how the opening quill of the scene in which the earmark is read. At first glance it may not search to hire any fear or suspense as it is a really e very(prenominal)day object, alone I specify that on that point is relevance to this in the everywhereall build up of apprehension. As it is read, the calmness of the melody in the rearwardground signal is behind overtaken by the sound of the wind as the story begins, and the charge this is makes you curio what is going to happen and starts building up some tension, especially as the pages of the volume flick in some charming way.It in a flash focuses you on it as the book is lit up, skeleton in the closetd by the apparition of an unbeknownst(predicate) place which may be playing on our fear of the unknown. It then fades into the next scene, which I believe gives it a sense of smooth carrying on, and the suspense unfeignedly starts to kick in. One of the key ways in which David Lean creates fear is by the imagery of end all around, a common technique used by directors. One of the chief examples of this is when fritter runs ultimo the gallows in the wide open marshes. With the use of perspective he really looks the similar size as the first, al just about as if it is made for him.Subconsciously I think that this must make the scene much than worrying for the earreach as they have the picture of him and dying together in their minds. This is strongly reinforced by the certify gibbet which towers over him as he runs underneath it which once once again bear witnesss that death is over him all the date. I find that this is a very effective way of creating fear as it is not besides manifest so it works at our subconscious which is more subtle and can create more lasting and deeper fears as we thuddingly piece them together in the bac ks of our minds. some other example of death imagery is simply the graveyard which almost always has the gravestones tone outsizedger than Pip and looming over him, perchance to create a sense of foreboding. I think that the constant reminder of death being always there is definitely a voluminous reason that this is the classic suspense scene always remembered. Of operate imagery is also used elsewhere one of the foremost cases of this is when the second head is shown looming over Pip you can preferably clearly chaffer what look intoms to be a face in the gnarled bark.This reflects the immature fears of Pip and so makes us immediately empathize with him and feel his fear as well due to our compassion for panic-stricken children that is within most people, especially eyesight as that sort of thing can live in with us until we are much older. Of course the imagery is not the only way of creating fear and suspense. some other obvious technique used in this film is the way objects or people, specifically Pip, are placed in the frame to give them certain relevance. This is shown to start with by the world line upming very big and Pip seeming very teeny by using very inappropriate establishing shots.You may think that this would make him seem instead irrelevant but as he is kept quite substitution in the mise en scine and the camera moves with him we can see that his size on the separate must serve a contrasting purpose and I believe that this is to show us just how scary and big this world is, especially to a child, and back-to-back away lead us to infer with him and therefore feel his fear. Again this use of size is echoed later in the scene when Pip meets the convict, with the convict always richly-minded over him in a way that makes him seem very weak and in peril.At some points we cannot even see the convicts head as it is looming so high above him that it does not fit in the frame. It could be said that this is just for practicalit y but I think it is important because in quite a lot of the time we can be more scared by what we cannot see that what we can see and the fact that his head is not in the shot makes it seem all the more frustrating as we do not feel that we can see the completely picture and therefore it scares us as the unknown is a massive reckon in how we get scared..Another more subtle way that this film gets into our subconscious is through very clever sacking which can be seen as very symbolic. In the shot where the boy runs toward the camera we can quite clearly see that the foreground is darker than the diminish shining on the horizon so we can seemingly see that the boy is running from the light into the dark and I would associate this with risk of infection and fear. However, I think the use of light is most evident in the section with Pip and the convict as Pip clearly has the light shining on him while the convict is left in the dark.This not only makes him more shady as we cannot see him as well as we would like to but it also makes him seem dark and scary which sparks most peoples inner fear of darkness and again that which is unknown. Use of the dark is therefore a very popularly used way to really get into peoples heads as it is a primal fear that everyone has and instantaneously makes us feel nervous when this man is introduced because he is so dark within the frame compared to Pip whom we have come to self-assurance who is lit up.Although a lot of the liberation is not as strong as in some other films, I think that the way that it affects us is still quite noticeable and does serve a very useful purpose in that it grabs our attention and slowly builds up future unconscious foreshadowing of future events. belike one of the more obvious things which David Lean uses to create tension is his use of sounds. out-of-town many other suspenseful films he does not use suspenseful music or much silence, but in fact the chilling sounds of the howling wind, di stant seabird call and the creaking of channelizes.These may seem a little over the top to a modern audience used to being scared in much more elaborate ways, but they still can make you sunder if you are really getting into the film. A great deal of this is just iterate over and over, so you are lulled into a false sense of security so that when the scream comes as Pip is grabbed by the convict you are caught completely aside guard. This use of a long period of similar sounds then a large, move one is a lot used to great effect in films and the shock of it is a very good tactic as it shakes the audience into focus and really makes them pathfinder whats happening.The scream itself is quite scary as, having to got to empathise with the boy, we immediately share his fear and motive to know what is going on but cant quite tell. I think that this is again going back to the fear of the unknown which has seemed to come up quite often in this review. Lastly, it is useful to look a t some of the more technical techniques used to make this film suspenseful, namely camera movement and post production edit.I dont feel that the way the camera moves makes it quite as suspenseful as it could be as there is not all that much make with it other than panning crosswise whenever Pip moves. It could possibly be meliorate had more been done with it such as zooming in slowly to build up tension or quick movement away from Pip to disassociate with him at some points. However, it could be said that the lose of movement in the shots makes them seem more sharply put together and could make movement more edgy and therefore in a way scarier.The editing on the other hand I feel is quite well done to make it seem more suspenseful. As the scene opens there are long, slow moving shots which establish us into the scene and make us feel a sense of what it is like to be there and begin to draw us into it. The shots prolong to be long and unhurried until the extended shot of Pip sl owly looking round behind him as he begins to feel that something is wrong. The shots then speed up rapidly, cutting from him to the tree then back to him and even more quickly onto the tree with the gnarled face.With this we can feel his fear building up and we begin to feel it ourselves too, and as he gets up and runs we are fully with him and are just as shock as him when his is grabbed by the convict. The shots enlistment quite fast as he has his conversation with the convict which I feel reflects his own fear in the place and again, because we have already built up some form of empathy for Pips character during the lilliputian time before, we begin to worry what will happen as well.So there it is, I can answer the question that in this old classic the way that David Lean thinks that a film can be made suspenseful and fearful is mainly by slowly getting us to feel for a character and build up imagery of death and subconsciously keep feeding us fearful pictures and sounds so t hat when the climax of the fear comes we are equally as shocked as Pip is.Although modern audiences powerfulness scoff at this movie as it is not as scary by todays standards, I think that it is a very clever piece of film in making you scared without being too obvious about it and that if you look conservatively in more contemporary films you will see that even then the analogous techniques are generally used. Thats it for this months film question, but please write in with responses or suggestions for November, and keep an eye out for these techniques when you are next watching a scary film