"Here's Johnny!" - The Shining

One thing I noticed whilst watching The Shining is the recurring use of long shots. The audience is almost made to act as a bystander or observer by being distanced from the action; as seen in the still frame above. This use of camerawork also creates intrigue and adds to the "Pandora's box" narrative idea when Danny is told to "stay away from room 237". The long shots mean we cannot see a lot of the action and we are out on edge by our vision being obscured. This plays on our innate curiosity.
The very slow editing in some parts adds to this.

 The camera often focuses on Jack Nicholson's character Jack Torrance to highlight his descent into paranoia and madness. He converses with other characters (or himself) but the camera remains on him for a long time which becomes very unnerving for the audience. We want to see the other character's reactions but are not allowed to, putting us on edge; as do the very slow zoom ins though out.
Whilst the idea of simply holding one shot for a prolonged length of time is very simple and effective I'm not sure it will work for our teaser trailer. We shall have to experiment.


Sound

The opening scene of the film shows how effective sound can be. Without any sound we are merely shown an idyllic scene. However the use of contrapuntal sound completely changes the whole interpretation of the setting. This clashing and contrapuntal sound is used throughout to continue to distort pour understanding of events.
However this idea progresses when the non-diegetic sound changes from being music to simply noise (high pitched squealing sound) which puts the audience on edge even more as you want to sound to stop but are forced to continue watching.


Mise en Scene
The idea of opposing elements is continued. Scenes are deliberately created to clash and be in juxtaposition to each other. i.e. a man we believe to be psychotic dressed in a tailored suit at a party, a glamorously dressed woman with a blood stained hand print on her dress and a river of blood pouring though a stylish

This works particularly well for a psychological thriller as it echos the complications and confusion in the mind.