O S essay 'IT'

The opening 1½ minutes of Stephen Kings IT (1990) are titles. The titles start with a bold black and white Stephen King that rushes towards the screen with a loud sound and the title, IT is revealed in a striking Black and Blood red font. Both the sound and visual elements create a sense of unease , the loud sound and use of blood red font are both generic traits of a horror/ thriller of 1990 but are still used effectively with modern audiences today.
After the main title of the film there are more titles of cast and crew. White font titles and a background showing black and white pictures of a group of children in the 1960’s. The use of the pictures without a explanation makes the audience ask why they are being shown them, and are they important. This is a hermeneutic code in the form of questions, these question effectively keep the audiences focus and interest as they wait for an explanation. During the opening titles there is a piano tune that is slow and connotes a sad mood.
After the titles the first shot is a low angle shot looking up at the sky as a lightning bolt and the sound of thunder flash making a jumpy mood. After this there is a few shots of clothes on the line blowing heavily in the wind making the audience feel isolated. Then a young girl rides past on her tricycle wile singing a nursery rhyme, the audience immediately feels fear for her as she is defenseless. She cycles to the front of her house were her mum tells her to hurry up it is going to storm, this puts the audience further on edge as the modern audience has become preprogrammed to match the word storm in film to a negative or scary event. As she walks towards the house a deep scary laugh fades in. The laugh happens three times and then she sees a clown with a sadistic smile. The audience again feels fear as the character of the clown is obviously not a trustworthy character and is an out of the ordinary being much like many of the ‘antagonists’ are in horror thrillers. The character itself is another hermeneutic code as the audience does not know who or what this character is. Every time the clown is seen a slow tempo carnival music is played which receives an almost skin crawling reaction from the audience. The facial expression changes and claws and fang like teeth are shown as the clown goes towards the girl (the claws and fangs are established early on in the film as this makes the audience have a large reason to fear the clown because he has tools to kill or hurt other characters, this is very common with films of this genre)
After this the mother comes out of the house and gives a prolonged and over dramatic scream , very common with horrors. Then another shot fades in of a police investigation site and a man asking the p.c. question. As the two seem familiar and the p.c. trust the man the audience immediately come to trust this character. The sergeant then interrupts the conversation and tells the man to leave the investigation to the police officers. The man questions him about the other killings. Another hermeneutic code as the audience wishes to know how these have happened. The next shot is of the man at an office desk. he is speaking to himself and wishing that it is not back again a hermeneutic code as the audience does not know what IT is.
The codes and effects used in this opening sequence although not very effective today as the special effect and style are not as intense and gory as are used today , but at the time when it was released it would have been very successful in delivering the correct mood for a horror thriller.