Opening Titles Deconstruction - American Horror Story - Asylum

American Horror Story - Asylum

American Horror Story is a horror drama produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. It has four series all set in different time periods. I have chosen it because it is one of my favorite programmes and I think the opening credits are very interesting and reflect the programme itself very well. Asylum is the second and my favorite series so far.

The minute the opening credits start we are made aware of the type of TV drama this is. The extremely disturbing images and use of unnatural sounds in the music express the eeriness of this very cleverly made horror. As we can see to the right of this text there is a girl walking up the stairs in the crab position in a nightgown. This is an iconic horror image stemming from the famous film 'The Exorcist'. As well as it being made obvious to the audience that is is a horror series we can see that what we are about to watch will be set in a time in the past due to the
old fashioned night gown and staircase.

The music in my opinion is what makes this opening sequence so interesting, it is very scratchy and has sudden outbursts of random noises over a constant almost leering base tone. These random outbursts are similar to some of the noises that the patients make throughout the programme such as screaming etc. The music itself is enough to make you scared seeing as it fits the images of people rocking in their beds and close ups of people screaming and doing other things associated with mental health (seeing as this is set in a 1960's asylum).

The placement of the actors names is central and as i mentioned before flares onto the screen in capital letters when the outbursts of noise happen, this is very direct and shows that in the series there will be a lot of enigma codes and surprises that we weren't expecting to happen. This could also suggest that there is a lot of focus on the characters and that they are all individually important. The typography is quite a weird font and as we can see in the whole shot there is some flickering and special effect to make the shot look like old film - again referring back to the fact that the series is set in the 1960's. Throughout this opening sequence the colors are very dark due to the nature of the programme and there is strobe lighting that adds to the scary effect. The costume is very typical for this era with the main costume being hospital gowns and 1960's attire. The use of cut editing is very appropriate seeing as it adds to the discontinuity making us feel very jumpy with disorientated shots.