The Ring
Institutional Information:
The Ring was made in 2002, and directed Gore Verbinkski. It was produced by DreamWorks SKG, and filmed at various locations such as 5TH Avenue & Stewart Street, Seattle, Washington.
At the box office, it was first budgeted $48,000,000 and on the opening weekend, on 1981 screens, the film made $15,015,393.
The target audience for the Ring is generally a teenage age. Firstly, the age limitation for the film is 15, and therefore, this means that the producers are aiming at a late teens, early twenties age. This is also evident through the films plot, as some of the characters are student aged people, which means the audience can therefore reference the characters better. A key part of the story is also the television, and this indicates that it is for people more likely to be television literatre, usually the younger generation. There is quite a bit of violence in the film which suggests the target audience’s age is older, but above all the whole plot and story is very dark which suggests viewers of a young age group would not find viewing it appropriate.
As the psychological style of the Ring is similar to our initial ideas for our own production, the target audience may be similar, as the content may be quite alike that of the Ring.
By analysing the Ring, I aim to get more ideas for the planning of my own productions, for instance, I will have greater knowledge of the used mise en scene elements in horror films, in order to create equally scary effects on my production. For instance, the green tinted lighting effect, during the Ring, is used as a metaphor for the video tape spreading like a disease, and killing off people one by one.
I chose mainly to focus on these lighting effects, as I think it would be a useful effect to use in our own production, mainly because alike in the Ring, our thing is a bit of a disease. I found this really effective whilst watching the Ring, because not only does it give everything an ill look, very derelict and sickly, but also it makes you notice the other colours in the film a lot more.
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The setting also contributes to the lighting effects. By filming lots of the action in Seattle, the weather is almost guaranteed to be dull and rainy, which is conventional for a horror film. Due to this weather, the natural lighting is often poor, and therefore contributes to the mise en scene.
As we are going to be concentrating on the opening of a horror film for our own production, I thought looking at the opening scene for the Ring would be a clever idea. In the opening, the audience is introduced to two teenage girls, home alone, the typical victims. They then start to talk about a horror film rumour, and then one begins to get haunted/psychologically attacked, and ends up a victim of Samara (the demon child in the Ring). In this opening sequence, the film uses everyday things to scare the victim and the audience, such as the fridge door and television.
The film overall uses many different typical conventions in order to keep to the genre of horror. There is a scene where one of the female victims is in the shower, and apart from that there isn’t much sex and nudity.
There is a lot of violence and gore involved in the ring, there is a suicide scene and a lot of disturbing clips.
The victims also go in the direction of the killer, and do things like answering the phone, whilst the audience know it’s a bad idea. Many of the scenes are very dark, and when the characters first talk about the myth about the video tape, the killer comes. There is also a lot of diagetic sound used which adds to the eeriness. The poor weather conditions also exist as a stereotypical horror convention.
However, in this the typical hero happens to be a female, a strong woman who tries everything to uncover the truth and save herself and her son. The location also makes the audience realise that horror can defy traditional things, as it is set in a bustling city, yet it is still scary.
Overall, the Ring is effective because it uses a mixture of the expected and the unexpected in order to scare the audience. Therefore, when it comes to filming and editing the opening of our horror film, I think it is important to add things which the audience do not suspect.
