Psycho analyses -the shower scene

When she first gets in the shower and switches the shower on, we get to see the point of view shot. This shot is used here so we can get more inside of the character because we can see now what she sees, which makes the situation more personal to us, so it is almost like we are there. They also use this shot to distract us from the situation and it creates the tension that something bad is going to happen, due to the low angle shot as we now see that she hasn’t got the power as it lets the audience imagine that she is little and powerless which adds a sense of innocence. The water completely contrasts the evil killer that is going to murder her, because we usually associate water with purity and relaxation, so in this case it is quite unconventional. This shot is also a cutaway shot and is to being used to distract us and makes us focus on this but not the woman. The shower head is in the middle and we can see the water pouring out of it, covering th entire shot, which again gives us the sense of dominance so we know that something is going to happen this shower.

This shot is a mid shot, so it allows us to see her innocence because she doesn’t have a clue what is about to happen. However, the audience has a clue by the way this shot has been composed; we can see clearly that, although we can still her face, she is not the main focus in this shot, because the woman is more to the right of the shot and leaves us with a view from which we can see the shower curtain  and it makes us focus more on the shower curtain, because it is a prop that is see through, so that allows us to see any shadows and makes us feel tense because now we are only waiting to see who is going to come behind her, as the shot left us with so much space to look at. These shots, as they gets to this point where there is someone going to be behind the woman, evolve in a lot of jump cuts, which is being used here to create the drama and almost mirrors the way her heart is beating at this point onwards.

This is a close up shot so we can finally get to see what is killing her. It I also the woman’s point of view shot, and it is very at a eye level so the audience can get more engaged with the woman and what she sees. However, it is very hard to decide who this killer is, because it remains its identity very well as the shadow fall in her face and the water runs right in front of her face, which enables us to see her properly, which adds a sense of mysteriousness and makes us feel more scared because we cant actually properly    see what it is that is killing the woman, which I think is worse.
This shot uses the golden mean, as the killers head is right in the middle. The knife its self is a lot higher, because it is holding it up, which shows that the knife has a power and dominance as that is what it is going to use as a weapon.

 This is an extreme close up of her mouth, which shows us that she is screaming, so it shows us how frightened she is at this point as she realises that the killer is in there with her, holding a knife. This is also a jump cut, which is used here to makes us jump, as she screams, and produces a diegestic sound, which makes the audience very tensed and scared for her. However it is very conventional becasue thrillers usually use close ups of the thing that suggests/ or creates drama, so in this case it is the close up of her mouth.

At this point we get to see a high angle shot of her being attacked by the killer, which gives us the sense of claustraphobia because we now see that she can’t escape anywhere and she is in a very small space, not having anywhere to run, which makes the audience feel tensed and helpless. Also In this shot we get to hear the non diegetic sound, which is a sound of a violin which makes the situation even more dramatic because it is very high pitched and discordant. High pitch of a violin sound always indicates danger and is very conventional because a typical thriller would use this to present danger. We can also hear the stabbing sound at this point, which makes the situation more real, because we can heat the movement and the actual stabbing itself.

This is another conventional shot and yet another cut away, to represent death in this case or in other cases is used to represent danger. It is a pathetic fallacy and acts as a metaphor in this cutaway shot to show us that the weather mirrors the drama that is going on in the bathroom. A non diegetic sound has been used here to create the sense of thunder, which adds to the atmosphere and the theme of danger, because most people are scared of thunder as it makes them feel uneasy and unsafe.

Then we can a close up shot of her hand on the tiles, which indicates that she is trying to grab hold of something, which shows that at this point she is very desperate to stay alive.


After this, the music starts to be very doomed like, the violin stops as if this was the end and now she is dead. Another thing that indicates this is this extreme close up of her eye pupil, which also shows how she is dying, which indicates the end for her, as her pupils gradually start getting wider, The eye itself looks petrified which shows that she had a horrible end.

 This is an example of a graphic match in editing. This is used to represent death in a very graphic way, because the eye looks like the plug hole but in the same breath, shows the contrast of them too because one represents the woman dying, and this one represents death itself because we can see the blood going down the plug hole. This is a long continuity editting, and there are no more fast jump cuts because they are not needed because the mood is settled and so is the scene as everything is now calmer because the killer has left.

This shot is a close up shot of her eye, but we can see that the eye is upside down, and with the help of continuity editing, the eye zooms out in a circular motion and then leaves us with the close up of just her face and her neck. I think that this has been used very well because it acts as another graphic match with the previous shot, and at the same time uses continuity editing to confuse the audience by losing the sense of disorientation but the focus stays always the same; she is always looking at us with her opened eyes, which suggests stress and almost makes her look possessed and evil herself, which whilst she is looking at us, makes the audience feel very uncomfortable. I think that it is very unconventional due to this reason and I think that it is a fantastic way of putting so many aspects of editing into one long editing.

This is the ending shot for this scene. We can see by the lighting that it was dark, which is conventional for a murder to happen in thrillers, which reflects and adds on the panic that we have just experienced in the shower.