strip strangler CSI

How does the opening sequence of CSI-strip strangler attract the audience?

Strip strangler is about a murderer that targets young innocent women; he shaves all of his hair off for his murders. He smacks his victims in the head with various objects, forces them to drink a pill, then he rapes and kills them. For each of his murders he changes the way he goes about doing it, which makes it harder for the CSI team as the murderer is unpredictable.

Every single episode of CSI starts very similar; this causes the audience to expect something is going to happen, which builds up anticipation and is a    convention of the show, so the audience will automatically be expecting to see a dead body or the discovery of a murder.

The opening is a long high shot of Las Vegas at night; this implies that the people of the city seem trapped and someone down there is the murderer. The night mis-en-scene indicates danger and that something bad is going to happen.

The next shot is a high shot of the outside of a hotel this suggests somebody is the victim; the thunder and darkness make it seem like a horror film, which builds up anticipation and makes the audience think something bad is about to happen. The hotel door is wide open with makes it look vulnerable and easy to access. When the camera moves down the front of the hotel seems to look darker and you can see a man walk up the staircase inside the hotel which makes the audience think that he is the killer which builds up anticipation.

The next scene is inside the victim’s room; there are sounds of eerie atonal echoing which builds up to a crescendo which makes the audience anticipate something bad is going to happen to her. You can see the killers point of view, as he walks along the corridor it gets cramped which suggests the victim can’t escape. When the camera tracks into the victim’s room you can see a stereo typical female in her bed, she is young, attractive and is wearing night clothes. A creaking floorboard wakes up there is a cut to a closer cut which lets us see the fear in her face. The jump cut gives the audience a fright and she looks up as if she is looking at you. You see her point of view and you see red objects in her room which suggests danger, blood and death. It cuts to a medium close up and you can see relief in the victim’s face however there is still a low string sound which signifies there is still someone there and creates tension.

There is another creak of the floorboard and forces the girl to lift her head up. There is a cut so we see from her point of view again and a crescendo of non-diegetic sounds begin to gets louder and louder to build anticipation. The room is in complete darkness for a quick three seconds then a flash of lighting illuminates the room which reveals the killer who is wearing a black hoodie, which associates him with bad guys. He flexes the iron wire which suggests she is going to get strangled. We don’t see his face because the cut is so quick, this builds up suspense.

There is a cut to a high shot of the women screaming in fear; this angle makes her look more vulnerable. The pace of the editing increases to build up tension. There is another cut to show a medium close up of the killer and the iron falling off the table, as the women screams this is followed by a cut to a high angle of the women, this shows she is weak, the crescendo emphasises her scream to increase the sense of fear, then there is a fade to black before we actually see the crime, this keeps the audience in suspense.