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THE WOMAN IN BLACK

The woman in black is a historical supernatural horror film set in the Edwardian era in an English village. The story follows a widowed father called Arthur who goes to the village to try and sell an abandoned estate. whilst there he finds out about the woman in black, who has been killing children in the village, and stays to investigate.

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The first shots of the opening scene shows a close up of a china tea set and the hand of a little girl lifting up the tea cup for her dolls drink from. This cuts to a wide shot of three young girls sat down playing with their dolls.In this shot the audience can establish that they are in some kind of nursery or

playroom. As well as this, we can see from the dresses they are wearing and the kind of toys they are playing with that this is set in the Edwardian era. The girls are wearing pink and frilly clothes, which emphasises their innocence. This is done to make it even more disturbing when they die. The next shots show close ups of them playing with they toys again and then there is a two shot of the girls smiling and a mid shot of the other girl smiling back at them. We then see a wide shot of all three girls sat on the floor and the high angle suggests that we are looking at them from someone's point of view. This is reinforced when the three girls simultaneously turn there heads to look directly into the camera, giving the impression that something paranormal is happening. The girls have also stopped smiling at this point, which makes the audience know that something bad is about to happen. This cuts to a full shot of the girls and shows them once again simultaneously turning their heads to look at something.This time they are looking at the window, which is shown with a slow zoom in on it. This shows that the window is going to have a very important part in this scene. We then see the girls slowly standing up together. We are shown this in detail by a series of close ups on their torsos, one of the girl's feet and the same girl's hand holding a tea cup as she drops it. It shows a shot of the tea cup smashing on the floor in slow motion, followed by close ups of the girls feet crushing the toys as they walk towards the window. There is then a mid shot of all three walking towards the camera/window with gormless expressions on there faces, which suggests that they have been possessed. This cuts to a slightly further away full shot of them from behind stepping up onto the window sill and reaching for the latch. There is then a close of a latch being pulled down and the window opened. It then cuts back to the previous camera shot from behind and shows the three girls jumping out of the windows simultaneously. The last shot zooms out at the door of the playroom and shows a glimpse of a woman wearing all black, which suggests to the audience that this is the antagonist of the film.

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The music in this scene was very calm and slow at first and had a music box sound that went with the the children's tea party theme. This stays the same until the shot where they all suddenly turn their heads and the music very subtly changes to sound more ominous. The music gains more and more texture as the scene goes on , which makes the audience feel on edge. The music cuts out when the girls jump and we hear a woman screaming " my baby" ,presumably the mother. The lighting is also quite dark and gloomy, which adds to the eerie atmosphere.

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