The Ring (Opening Sequence Analysis)

The Ring (Opening Sequence)

The American remake of The Ring starts with a woman walking up a flight of stairs to find water dripping on the corridor floor. She approaches a door along the corridor and attempts to open it, placing her hand on the doorknob which the water appears to be dripping from. She enters the room to find a video playing...

The opening credits begin with the production company being the first name to be shown “DreamWorks studios presents” and the font used is quite disturbing, and so are the flashes of the various different scenes such as, chairs spinning by themselves trees, blood swirling around in a glass of water. The ring which is flashed a lot of the time in the opening credits makes the audience want to know what this movie is all about and what the ring has to do with it, the opening sequence has already left you in suspense. Even when they are showing people’s names like the director, producer and actors, it’s almost as if they’ve made sure that all of the people names that they show include a letter which requires a circle to be made when writing it, such as the letter ‘o’ , ‘b’, ‘g’, etc. That circular motion is always the last to disappear after the name has gone and you are just left with the imprint of a ‘o’ for a couple more seconds

The sounds used in the opening credits is low pitched and repetitive. However, as the music gets louder, more high pitched and includes more of a beat to it, the images seem to get even more disturbing. The credits are written on a dark background which gives you the impression that this movie is going to be very dark and eerie.

Different camera angles are used for effect, for example, at the very beginning when the woman is walking up the stairs the camera is low and taking a long shot, however as she reaches the of the stairs the camera doesn’t move and you can only she the woman’s legs as she walks along the corridor. She walks as slowly as physically possible to create maximum suspense, and as she steps in the puddle of water the camera changes to an extreme close up of the woman’s face to reveal her facial expressions whether she is happy or sad. At this stage her facial expression tells the audience that she is confused not so much scared at this point as she doesn’t really know what is going on, but as she opens the door she freezes and a screech from the video frightens her and as she is about to scream the camera zooms into her eye and many images appear, if you pause at the right times you may be able to see the image of a ring, a tree, a box containing fingers that have been cut off someone’s hand, before the video distorts and appears to come to an end as the screen goes fuzzy and the movie goes into the opening credits.