The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The Texas chainsaw massacre: the beginning is an American slasher film which is a prequel to the 2003 remake of the Texas chainsaw massacre. It was directed by Jonathan liebesman who also directed the Killing room. It was co-produced by the co-creators of the original 1974 film. Distributor: New Line (like seven). Production budget: $16 million.

The first image seen in the opening sequence is an old picture of a baby; the child seems to have something wrong with his face. This leaves the audience wondering whether or not something has happened to this child or if he was born with this. This links with the genre of the film because in slasher films there is always the element of wonder. The next image shown show’s a professional diagram of the human body with circled areas on the face. This implies that the child show previously has a medical condition in which he has seen a doctor. As of yet we still don’t know exactly what is going on and how this little boy damaged his face. This is slowly building the tension for the audience. The way in which the face of the man is not being shown makes the audience wonder why this mans face has not been shown, they’ll want to know if there is something wrong with him, maybe he is deformed? This builds up the mystery in the clip and raises questions from the audience. The next few shots show an older child whose face is being covered by his own hands and also by what seems to be his mother. This still provides the secrecy we wish didn’t exist. We find that his possible name could be Thomas Hewitt and that he is a patient of somewhere. This almost confirms what I thought with the professional looking diagram of the human body. Different points in the title sequence we see the camera roll and we see it’s edited to make different parts look old. This could give the audience a clue about when the film is set. We never see any bright colours; in a lot of opening to films we have seen bright reds, which connote blood and anger. This could be so it’s not giving to much away for the film, maybe it doesn’t contain a lot of blood it could be more physiological than anything else. At 1.24 we see a match has been lit, this match then goes on to set alight a picture of what we assume to be him when he was younger. For us the audience watching, we could guess that the child in the photos became like this because of fire? The way the director has pieced together the images, it’s like he is telling a story and helping us piece together what the man in question is all about. The sound in the clip makes the tone of the clip airy and somewhat creepy, this goes with the genre of film this is and also what we are looking for in our coursework. The music starts off quiet and then towards the end it becomes louder and more of a piece of music than just some sounds, this adds to the tension of the audience that has already been raised in the clip. The target audience for this film is the type we are wanting to watch our video, the type of audience who love a scare, the type who enjoy the tension and the type that enjoy fear.