Deconstruction: actors used in opening death scenes

Some supernatural horrors feature a death in the opening scene. Most of the time, the audience feel empathetic towards the character that dies, but sometimes the character is designed as a mercy kill and the audience feel no empathy towards them whatsoever. 

In Dead Silence the woman in the blue dress is the person that dies. Her clothes are more vibrant compared to her boyfriends and the audience immediately assume that she is more outgoing and she is really lively. 

In this scene I personally didn't feel any empathy towards her because she was acting immature and was constantly making sarcastic jokes about the doll, and her mode of address towards the boy was slightly sarcastic, which made you feel more empathetic towards the boy rather than the woman. 

SAW 3D:

This is the girl at the beginning of SAW 3D. As you can see the girl has a short pink shirt on, thats designed to make her boobs stand out, you can also see her bra. So the audience immediately assume she's a promiscuous female that likes attention from boys. She has very tight jeans on which adds to her personality and you find out in this scene she is cheating on the two boys pictured below. The audience feel no empathy towards her when she dies and many people say she deserved to die.

This is the boy named 'Brad' at the beginning of SAW 3D, he is going out with the girl pictured above. He is wearing exactly the same as Ryan (boy pictured below) so that the audience immediately know them to be equals. They could possibly be working in the same place, and they were kidnapped from work. You immediately feel empathy towards the two boys in this extract because you do not know why they are there and when you find out they have both been cheated on by the girl you encourage them to kill the girl because friendship matters more than the love of her. 

EVALUATON:

In our final piece we want the audience to feel empathetic towards the girl and the boy, even if they do die at the end. We believe in a film opening it is important to create a bond with the characters because you want them to survive and thrive.