'Signs'

Openin Titles:

‘Signs’ starts off with a black background, we then get a blue ambient light with the text in front of it. The blue light resembles a torch or search light, this fits into the theme of a thriller and what they are about. The titles are as simple black text format. It is quite a large font and is bold. The text appears and fades in a timed pattern. As the titles go on, the music speeds up and then the text becomes in time with the music. This is building up the tension of what is to come. When there is a dramatic thump / drum in the music, the text is almost thrown at the audience. The sound and sudden information that has been given to us make us both jump and anticipate what will happen. Eventually it goes to a black screen and then the main character jumping out of bed. The character jumping, makes the audience jump and then question why.

Mise-en-Scene:

The mise-en-scene in ‘Signs’ shows the family’s isolation. The sound builds up the tension until we get silence, which is broken by the man’s scream. There isn’t a lot of lighting; the only lighting we do get is that from the early morning sun rise. The darkness is there to make us wonder what is going on, why he and the children screamed and what kind of environment they are in. They live on a farm, surrounded by crops; their isolation tells us that they are on their own where the danger comes. They live in a large, old house, open to attack and is shown as being very vulnerable. The very tall crops allows the danger to hide and watch the family without us or the family actually seeing who / what it is, but knowing they are there. The family is shown as being rather weak and helpless. The sound is louder and faster to build tension, but it also has a few piano notes in it to give the Si-Fi aspect. A lot of those mise-en-scene features tell us what is going to / most likely to happen later on in the film.