When a Stranger Calls Deconstruction

Director: Fred Walton
Release date: 1979
Budget: $740,000
Opening weekend, USA: $21,411,158 


It begins with white titles in a lower case, serif font on a contrasting black background. There is a diegetic sound of outside noises  such as crickets and frogs. The titles have a visual effect of them hovering in air.
Sound of non-diegetic high pitched music plays. The movie title appears in the same font and the black background changes to an establishing shot scene of a street. It is a long shot with lots of trees. It is early evening, the blue tint connotes this. There is a sound of a dog's bark in the distance. The shot is not still, it looks like there was use of a steadi-cam. 
A small figure appears from far away, walking up the road towards the camera. The camera pans to follow the figure from a side view. It is dark and so only the silhouette is visible.
Figure walks up to a house. There are windows by the door exposing inside lighting. As the person walks up to the house, the music changes to become lower and more sinister and the titles turn green.

1. There is a long shot of inside the house. The house contains expensive looking black and white interiors. There is a woman coming down the stairs and a man walking through the hall towards the camera. There are many paintings on the wall and a large collection of walking sticks in a holder. This could signify an older member of the family lives with them, or that they have them for show to make them look classy.
2. They both walk towards the camera where the door is suggested. The door bell rings (diegetic sound). They are both dressed up and discussing a reservation, signifying that they are going out to dinner.
3. The man opens the door to show a young woman with blonde curly hair stood with books in her hand. The man and woman converse with her and they conversation connotes that she is a baby sitter and they are parents.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080130/

Part 1 of When a Stranger Calls:

 

Trailer:

Our film opening links closely with When a Stranger Calls as they both involve a babysitter. The opening of our film introduction involves a babysitter who is sat in the living room and becomes fearful as she hears noises coming from upstairs, this is similar to that of When a Stranger Calls. One main difference is that in our film, the babysitter does not receive unknown phone calls. The rest of our film opening takes a different plot outline to WASC as the film progresses to when the child grows up, therefore the main character will no longer be the babysitter.