AS Media - AHS: Murder House

The Brief:

-To deconstruct the opening credits of a film regarding the use of :

• use of mise en scene
• typography and its link to the genre

 AHS: Murder House

Genre:
The genre of this episode of American Horror Story is paranormal/possession as in murder house the people moving in are haunted by the previous owners and their victims.

Mise En Scene
There are multiple flashing images of young children particularly small girls that are usual victims of possession as the innocence of young girls is taken advantage of by the possessors. Thus conforming to the conventions of the paranormal and possession sub genres of horror. Some of these photos are burning that could symbolise the killers motives and possibly foreshadow future events that unfold within the episode, this is common of horror films as the majority of the time there are subtle hints as to the outcome of the narrative/plot. These pictures below seem like they would be the plausible victims of the killer in this episode as throughout the opening credits there is a constant reference to someone in a house whereby the camera is going through a dilapidated house. Also the photos seem like they would have been taken for the pleasure of a family to either admire or reflect upon as a mantle piece or a decoration for a room. This connotes the idea of an invasive murder or a series of murders that occur in the same place but with multiple victims.

Typography:

The typography used is a very aristocratic cinema like font with the exceptions of the o's. This combined with the antiquated photos of young girls gives a very chilling effect as the typography and antiquity of both the font and photos match up and create an image of an old murder case and could heavily link to the motives or motifs that are apparent in the episode. The typography use has a basic and smooth nature to it with the aristocratic like font however this is manipulated through the changing of the o's in the words or sentences as it adds a form of mystery to it as to the knowledge of those watching their is only one stand out thing to the typography and this leaves the audience with an outstanding enigma to the episode. The significance of the letter o in the alphabet is astounding as its shape has been apparent from the oldest recorded alphabet the Phoenician alphabet, in this alphabet it was recorded as a symbol of the word eye which can relate to the idea of possession as you would not see correctly and the o is out of place showing some sort of correlation between the two.