Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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which perspective is more frightening to present a horrific event. The film answers
its own question in two ways, first through creating a detached and ambivalent thirdperson
camera shot that is shocking in its lack of intensity of movement in
comparison with the previous shot, and secondly through an immediate return to the
eye/camera. This transition between perspectives, and the juxtaposition of these
shots is designed to feel disjointed and create a sense of disruption. The sequence
ends with this eye/camera shot, slowly chasing the terrified surviving girl around the
room into a corner, ending in a gradually enlarging and fading freeze-frame of the
girl’s final scream. The entire sequence gives the audience the very important first
fright of the film, setting the mood almost entirely through the first person
perspective.
The dissolve on the freeze frame leads directly into the opening credit
sequence, which begins with the title Friday the 13 th in a large three dimensional font
moving quickly from a point in the distance toward the audience. As unsettling as
the swift movement of the title may be, the film behaves as though the viewer feels
protected by the cinema screen, or does not anticipate a scare from the credits.
Cunningham, however, uses the eye/camera from the previous sequence to his
advantage, as the eye/camera shot functions to make the viewer feel directly
involved with the action within the film. When the title has filled the screen, it stops
suddenly, and a pane of glass seeming to separate the audience from the title
unexpectedly shatters with a loud crash on the soundtrack. The viewer is confronted
by the least likely element of the film, the opening title, and the eye/camera
compression model breaks apart; the film interacts with the viewer directly, without
utilising the point of view of a character within the film. This specific moment does
not function to make the viewer feel involved through a mediating character, but