The first sign of the beginning scene shows a high angle camera shot of a forest set at nighttime. This is the key to make viewers tense as you become more nervous at night rather than in a scene set during the day. Forests are also a cause of tension as it is an eerie location and is most commonly used in horror or thriller programmes. At this point, only the tops of the trees are visible but sound effects are used to make us nervous. The wind is howling and leaves are crunching beneath running feet as whoever is running breaths heavily. Eerie music is played using instruments such as symbols to add to the suspense. We wonder who could be running though the forest and the camera pans down into a long shot of a girl running amongst the trees. The tension mounts as we wonder who she is, why she is running and who or what she is running away from. By using camera angles and sound affects, tension can be created if the right atmosphere is projected. To add to this, the programme’s introduction is carefully planned to make us want to continue watching, making us tense and anxious as well as implanting questions in our minds. We, as viewers, need to watch the rest in order for those questions to be answered and our tension to be released.
Immediately the programme avoids the loss of viewers as they need to watch more. If this form of tension wasn’t created right from the start, viewers wouldn’t feel anxious and nervous and would lose interest.
As the girl stumbles to the ground, the camera shows a reaction shot of her emotions towards the person or thing standing before her. She looks scared. We can hear the wind whirling and a bright light appears. We begin to feel frightened and tense as we wonder why the girl is so afraid. The light gets brighter and brighter as leaves swirl in circles, carried by the wind. In the centre of the blinding light a dark figure appears. Without camera angles, sound effects, music and lighting expressed in the opening scene, we wouldn’t feel as intense. Our last question before the scene ends is whether or not the girl lives; so we want to watch on to find out what happens to her.
The transitional scene from the dark forest to the scene the next morning means we become less tense as daytime is less horrifying. The scene shows the exact same location of the night before and our question is answered as we discover the girl is dead. Investigators lift up her top and find two marks on her back. Immediately we wonder why they are there. The investigators then roll her over on to her front and we wonder why her nose has been bleeding. One of the investigators states: “She’s a girl from the Class of 89, it’s happening again isn’t it?” This scene is very affective as it poses yet more questions thus keeping the viewers interested. This scene sums up the investigation in hand as they are obviously trying to discover who or what is killing these people. With the investigation under way, we want to watch the rest to find their conclusion.
Main Characters
The two main characters in the programme are Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). It is important to have a male and female role to gain both male and female viewers. Quite often science fiction films are only watched by men because the main roles are usually played by men, for example, Luke Skywalker is the main role in Star Wars therefore the majority of viewers are male.
By having both genders playing the main roles everyone can relate to one of the characters and an even balance of viewers can be obtained.
The main characters are cleverly made to have opposite opinions. Mulder is the believer in the way that he is sure supernatural phenomena exists whereas Scully is the cynic that believes that everything can be explained by scientific facts and doesn’t believe that extra terrestrials exist. It is important to have both types of characters in the programme as there is bound to be some viewers that strongly believe in aliens and UFO’s and some that don’t. In theory all those that don’t believe there could be such things as aliens, will relate to Scully and all those that believe in alien existence, will relate to Mulder. This gains more watchers, as it will not only be the believers who will watch the programme.
Mulder and Scully have reversed stereotypes. Stereotypes are individual characteristics that separate one person from another. Having reversed stereotypes means that their characters are the opposite. In most films that star both a male and a female, the male tends to be the dominant one of the two. They appear strong and very much in control of both himself and the female. The females are most commonly known as the opposite to the males, they are projected as weak and helpless, requiring the men to keep them controlled. The reason why this is affective with the X Files is because the two main characters relate to the opposite gender. By this I mean that Scully comes across as the one that keeps the investigation stable. She appears sensible and realistic and is frequently keeping Mulder under control. She isn’t an emotional character; she doesn’t panic or become overly excited, whereas Mulder is. Mulder lets things get out of hand as he becomes alarmed or eager and therefore relies on Scully to put things right again. Like a female, Mulder is quite weak and is not the dominant character of the two. This is another reason why the X Files gains more viewers, especially females, as they want to see a programme where women have better roles and appear stronger than men (as in reality).
There is a noticeable love interest between Mulder and Scully but it is only a slight moment in the film when we can see evidence of this. This is when Scully finds two marks on her lower back, identical to those on the victims. She drops her dressing gown to show Mulder and he concludes the marks are that of mosquito bites rather than the marks on the murdered people. She hugs Mulder in relief, and for a slight moment when Mulder sniffs Scully’s hair, a love interest is present. We can tell this because of the reaction shot from the camera that showed the expression on his face. This is affective as it creates tension between the viewers. We want to watch the rest to see if their relationship develops further. As it happens, it isn’t until the last episode, 11 years later, that Mulder and Scully finally get it on. Until then, viewers are sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting to see what will happen. This will mean, that until the last episode, viewers won’t stop watching which therefore ensures that no viewers are lost throughout the series’.
Tension
Tension is a state of mind where viewers will feel anxious and nervous as they consider the possibilities of what might happen next in the programme. Tension is created in different ways but is only fully affective on television programmes as certain techniques can be used that aren’t possible in books, such as sound affects, music, camera angels, dialog and lighting. Without these features used in the X Files, we would not feel tense but bored and guarantied that viewers will turn over and watch a different channel. Tension is the key element in attracting an audience and keeping them watching.
The highest points of tension are strategically placed at the beginning, middle and end. The even distribute of tension keeps viewers interested and watching. The highest points of tension at the beginning gives us an insight of the situation in hand without revealing much to the viewer. Tension is built up by making us ask questions that make viewers nervous and anxious. The tension is also high when Mulder and Scully return to the scene of the crime at night, as they need to collect more evidence. We see a bright identical to that at the beginning and we become tense once again as we think that the same thing will happen again as it did at the beginning. Similarly, the end scene is also set in a forest and shows the girl getting killed by Billy. This is the moment of tension at the end of the programme that leaves us asking questions. At the very end of the programme, tension drops. This is so you become calm. By relaxing it gives you a chance to review the programme and think over all of the questions that still have not been answered that generated from the beginning, middle and end periods of high tension. By spreading the high tension moments out evenly, viewers are kept interested and are prevented from switching over to a different channel. I have noticed that all of the high-tension moments are all set in the forest. This shows that forests are a good setting to achieve a tense, eerie moment. It is also evident that all of the scenes are at night, a time when we feel unsafe and nervous. In all of these scenes, bright lighting is used when the victims are getting killed and either music or sound affects are demonstrated. This shows that tension is created by added affects. Tension can rise by speeding up the rhythm of music, adding eerie sounds, using different camera angles and different types of lighting.
The Truth
At the beginning of the essay, I explained the caption shown at the start of the programme, displayed in the opening scene. It stated; “The following story was inspired by actual documented files”. This was to make you believe that the programme is true. These captions appear frequently in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. These display and state the time, location and date of the event at the present moment. By showing these details, it makes the events appear true and not fabricated. It is also there once again to show how Scully records her findings each day. Referring back to the opening caption we are convinced that these files she must be writing are true in order for the programme to be produced. By constantly reminding us of this fact, we as viewers will carry on watching the programme and become more interested in it as it becomes more believable.
The Ending
The ending of the pilot episode makes you want to watch the next episode. This is due to the questions implanted in the viewer’s heads created when there are moments of high tension. Mulder makes a phone call to Scully at night. Mulder states that their documents have gone missing. Scully wants to talk further tomorrow. As it is near the end of the programme, we know that in order to find out what happened to their documents, we will have to watch the next episode when Mulder meets Scully the next day to discuss the missing files. This leaves us asking what might have happened to the files. This keeps viewers interested and guaranties that viewers will watch the next episode to gain the answers to their questions. We also see a man walking in a volt or warehouse of some sort in the pentagon. He carries with him the chip that Scully handed in as a piece of evidence for the investigation. He opens a container and adds it to a collection of about five other chips. This makes us wonder whether the government know a lot about the alien encounters and are trying to cover it up so that Mulder and Scully don’t discover the truth. We want to know who the man is and why he is hiding the evidence. There also seems to be a lot more boxes in the volt and we wonder what other types of files are contained in them. We ask the question, could they contain even more evidence that covers up past alien encounters? We want to watch the next series because the viewers have no proof that the government are hiding the truth so we need to watch on to find out more. We want to see if Mulder uncovers the government conspiracy to see whether they know anything linked with the investigation and what they might be hiding that they don’t want Mulder and Scully to know. As many questions are aroused, viewers are left tense, and the only way to relieve their tension and to find out the answers, is to watch the next episode.
Conclusion
The X Files has proven to be a very successful programme, leaving viewers feel tense means that they are kept interested and therefore carry on watching. The bullet points below sum up all of the aspects that make the X Files a successful programme.
- Having both a male and female as the main roles means that an even gender of viewers is gained.
- Sharing a love interest between them keeps viewers on the edge of their seats and ensuring that nothing happens until the end of the last series keeps viewers watching till then.
- Using music, sound affects, camera angles, lighting and dialog, is an ideal way to speed up tension to make viewers nervous.
- Placing the high moments at the beginning, middle and end ensures that viewers won’t get bored at certain points in the film.
- Questions are created that can only be found out in the next episode so viewers have to keep watching the following programmes in order to find the answers to their questions.
- Making the film appear true makes more viewers interested as it becomes more believable.
Without featuring these points in a science fiction programme, viewers aren’t going to be interested so therefore would not watch it. By including these points, The X Files has become a successful programme for viewers to watch.
