Sound Deconstruction - The Ring

For my sound deconstruction, I wanted to look at the opening sequence of a film within our genre, so I chose to look at Samara's Song - the opening song in The Ring. I firstly looked at the lyrics of the song:

Round we go

The world is spinning

When it stops

It's just beginning

Sun comes up

We live and we cry

Sun goes down

And then we all die

Clearly, the lyrics highlight the genre of the film, as they have dark connotations such as 'die' and 'cry', which juxtapose with 'sun' and 'live'. This enables the audience to form an immediate presentation of what the film is going to be like, and sets the tone for the remainder of the film. There are also very few words in the lyrics, and are very simple to follow. This is effective as it means that the audience can  focus on what is being sung, without losing focus on the visuals. The verses of the song are also sung repeatedly, which could suggest repetition within the narrative.
The format of the song is in the style of a nursery rhyme, with a young girl singing. The use of a young girl enables a contrast between innocence and purity with the themes of the film being death. The juxtaposition of the singer and the lyrics is effective, as it makes it sound eerier. The pace also adds to the effectiveness of the soundtrack, as it is sung slowly, enabling the audience to understand the lyrics. This also emphasises the nursery rhyme style of the song, which are traditionally slow paced. The pitch of the song varies throughout, the instrument used being an metal xylophone, which enables a variety of pitches and crisp sounds to be produced.

Although the creepy and eerie soundtrack works effectively for The Ring, it wouldn't suit our opening sequence, and therefore isn't what we are planning to use.
As our opening has two elements to it, the initial castle scene and also the kidnapping scene in the forest, we wanted two separate soundtracks, but wanted to ensure that they worked together and flowed. To add suspense, we decided that we didn't want any lyrics for the castle scene, as this could potentially take the focus away from the visuals. For the second section, we wanted a juxtaposition of sound, using a more upbeat pop song rather than a dark song and lyrics. This would be effective as the contrast would aid the visuals as the girl is unexpectedly kidnapped. Over the song, we would layer an eerie soundtrack to add suspense.