A Nightmare On Elm Street, 1985

5

Director: Jack Sholder

Year of Release: 1985

Budget: $2,200,000 (estimated)

Box Office Takings:

USA-$2,865,475
UK- £1,107,123

Deconstruction:

The film opens with a street with cars parked on the sides and trees hanging over. It creates a homelike feeling. A American yellow school bus turns down the road. We hear non diegetic music and diegetic noises such as dog barking.

The titles appear on screen, white sans serif soft capitals creating a ‘bubble’ writing effect.

The next title appears, special effects create a red rips slice through the shot with a rip sound effect. The rips spell out ‘A Nightmare’ in glowing red creating a gothic font. And ‘On Elm Street part 2’ in white relating back to the previous sans serif, bubble font.

 Emphasis on the music makes the audience jump as ‘Friday Revenge’ appears, this time in a range of blue colours, creating a 3D bubble effect again. Music clashes together to make one note as the bus pulls up at a house.

People get off the bus and we hear voices of the teenagers as they say good bye to their friends. The bus then drives off and we see a mid shot of inside the bus. This is where the film concentrates on mise-en-scene, the audience see a range of teenagers around the 80’s. The fashion and hair styles inform of us this. We see kids talking and we can already stereotype the characters shown in this film and which audience its aiming at.

The camera shows a close up of one kid sat on his own. His hair is combed over and he looks out of place, commonly referred to as a 'misfit'. 

 He looks to two girls beside him, their stereotypicaly seen as the 'popular' ones, pretty, blonde hair. The boys body language shouts he is uncomfortable, with his hunched shoulders. As the film contiunes the bus pulls up again and we see more people get off the bus. We see an over shoulder shot of the bus driver, looking normal. This shot refers back to later in the film when the bus driver appears to have changed physically but when is the mystery. The film continues to relate the boy and the two girls talking, signifying to the audience that these will be the main characters. The bus pulls up again and it leaves the boy and the two girls on it.

Thats the two minute opening of their film, their opening does continue however as our coursework only allows us two minutes, we felt it is more resourceful to research into what they include in their two minute opening so we can gather a knowledge of whats visible to include in our opening.

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089686/

Story Line:On Elm Street, Nancy Thompson and a group of her friends including Tina Gray, Rod Lane and Glen Lantz are being tormented by a clawed killer in their dreams named Freddy Krueger. Nancy must think quickly, as Freddy tries to pick off his victims one by one. When he has you in your sleep, who is there to save you?

Trailer: