Opening Titles Deconstruction: American Horror Story - Asylum

I am deconstructing the opening credits for AHS Asylum. The credits centre around a horror theme, specifically a dark mental asylum with many of the images revolving around paranoia of being watched and gruesome experiments. This can be seen in the images that flash between each title. All of these images are very dark, and they flash in and out with very little context, making them very disconcerting.

 The font is a striking yellow on a black background, a common combination for certain genres, such as horror or thriller. The font itself is a sans serif, perhaps art deco style font, popular in the 1920s to 1940s. This, along with the soft glow, reminiscent of a neon sign, sets the time period and gives the opening a vintage feel.

Grotesque, shocking images flash between each title reinforce the theme of the piece.

 The noise and deterioration visible in some frames of the titles resemble that of old films, reinforcing the vintage themes and time setting.

American Horror Story Hotel opening credits deconstruction

American Horror Story Hotel: opening credits

The purpose of this task was to do a deconstruction of an opening credits, as inspiration which lets us explore the horror genre and the importance of genre appropriation.  

    

Lighting

shadows: 

One particular feature of the opening, that I thought was effective, was the manipulation of shadows to make the opening more eerie and sinister. I liked how the shadows appeared around the out sides and edges, which gives the frame a keyhole-like effect. 
 

 This cleverly mimics the theme of the series, which is based in a hotel. But also makes the scene appear to be enclosed in, making the subjects visually claustrophobic, generating the sense of suffocation or danger.        

Low key lighting:

Low key lighting conforms to the common conventions of the horror genre, as it creates mystery and the single source of light acts as a spotlight so the focus is on the blood on the carpet.   

Mise-en-scene

Blood:

A frequent use of blood is used in the maid scene, and is repeated throughout the opening credits.  

Dripping blood and the pool signifies murder and danger as it suggests overkill, paired with low lighting lends a fear factor to the scene.    

Rooms:

Long barren corridors with no foreseeable end, and barely any lighting adds to the feel of claustrophobic surroundings and endows a sense of entrapment with no escape.   

 Bare walls, where plaster is flaking off makes them seem as though the building has been abandoned, leaving it exposed.

Sound

Non-diegetic soundtrack that plays throughout is a distorted piece which has a recurring stringed, staccato rhythm with occasional metallic screeching noises. This complements the static, fast editing, and quick pace of the opening sequence which develops its creepy feel.    

Editing 

Fast pace: 

There are many cuts from one scene to another, but the one that stood out was this example of the mattress, where many cuts of are edited together to make a fast pace motif, which gives it a jittering effect.  

Between all the frames, it suddenly zooms out with each shot, were we see a transformation of the innocent-looking child to the disturbing stages of creature emerging out of the hole in the mattress. The quick change, heightens the horror presented in this scene.

Nothing is really in frame for very long which imitates jump scares.       

Camera angles

I noticed that when a subjects was fully in frame it was viewed through the keyhole, however when there is a close up to something close-up shot is always full frame. This acts as a way to hide the identities of those in the scene, so that they may remain an enigma which fuels the eerie feel of the opening credits.

Typography

The typography for season 5 Hotel titles still looks like the original font of the logo, but this time it's made to look like a motel sign, which matches the theme of the series.
Sans serif font implies that the show itself is quite a contemporary form of horror, which isn't so much focused on religion as this would have been serif font.  

Conclusion

Though my group in particular are not doing horror, American Horror Story-Hotel showed me that you can still make an effective film opening of a different format. However, the success is based on the appropriate use of filming and editing so the opening adheres to the genre, so in my case, Film noir or neo-noir.