Thriller

1. Thriller

2. The thriller genre is generally based around protagonists and antagonists after a crime is committed early in the film. Thriller is hard to define because it is so broad and you can have tons of sub genres to go along with it. So for instance it’s not uncommon for a thriller film to have another genre on top of thriller. So two recent films: The A Team is an Action and a Thriller making it a hybrid genre Action-thriller. Frozen is a subgenre, a Psychological Thriller

3. Hitchcock having some of the earliest notable thrillers known in the industry, started off the way thrillers are still made today. He introduced the tension and excitement through the editing, performance and mise en scene. For example in Psycho the famous shower scene shows the psychotic killer stabbing a woman to death. As he pulls open the shower curtain the sharp violin score begins. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4 The shower scene has become so famous that a lot of the sound and shots are similarly used in films, subsequently it’s been done so much it’s considered a pastiche by some people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV0lSpgMsxM&feature=related Some of todays great thrillers like Misery or Se7en have a lot of aspects that Hitchcock introduced, but new elements that directors have introduced to try and differentiate themselves from others. In this some have created new genres on top of thrillers, like action thriller or psychological thriller.

4. Todorov said that a narrative structure of a film has 5 stages. • A state of Equilibrium • A disruption of Equilibrium • A recognition of this disruption • An attempt to repair this disruption • A reinstatement of equilibrium • More often than not the disruption of the equilibrium in the thriller genre is a crime which really, is the core of the narrative • The narrative will change from the expected to keep the audience intrigued and wondering what will happen next. For example in No Country For Old Men the main character is killed quite a bit before the end of the film. • Furthermore in thrillers directors will focus on props or sets to give the audience a clue as to their importance. However a lot of the time the directors will be tricking the audience to keep them confused and wondering what will happen next. • These can be called McGuffins. McGuffins were coined by Alfred Hitchcock “It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers". McGuffins are the object of the characters journey. So for example in No Country For Old Men the object for Javier Bardem is to get the money back, for Tommy Lee Jones it is to capture Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin and for Josh Brolin it’s to escape Javier Bardem • In Se7en you follow the detectives through most or all of the investigation so you try and solve the riddles while watching and you try and guess what the clues mean. The majority of these riddles and clues are solved, so for example going back to Se7en we discover that the killer is a religious fanatic because of the seven deadly sins he leaves as clues.

5. The characters of thrillers are generally split in 3. • The protagonists • The antagonists • The victims/innocent bystanders. Often the protagonists or heroes are flawed in some way. In The Taking Of Pelham 123 Denzel Washington’s character has been suspected of bribery and is being investigated when the film is set. The antagonists or bad guys are usually in it for money or they have a disturbed background that has made their psychological state unbalanced, for example in The Taking Of Pelham 123 the antagonist played by John Travolta was a private equity executive and was imprisoned for defrauding a NYC pension fund and his plan was to ransom the passengers on a train.

6. Mise en scene in thriller. Mise en scene is what you see in the frame, setting, location, props, costumes, make up, figure expression and lighting/colour http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwLiH8bWFdM&feature=related In this scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds we can see the setting is quite a nice average American house and we can’t see that the birds have ravaged the inside killing the man inside. Hitchcock has us outside so we can get a nice image of this setting and deduce that this will be a safe scene but then the inside is completely the opposite of what the outside looks like with broken cups/windows and a body. With every scene or shot you can look at a characters costume and make up and get a good reveal about what kind of character they are. For example if a girl is wearing a red dress with lots of make up we can assume the character is a promiscuous girl. We may not be right but it’s the connotations that come with the outfit and the message the director is trying to get across to us. The setting or location can be an idea to the mood of the scene. What I mean by this is that if you’re watching a thriller and there is a scene in a police station, you can assume that nothing scary will happen in the scene because of all the police around. Just like you may feel safer in any public setting in a thriller and the opposite in a secluded location. Props can be as insignificant as making a scene look real or they can be as important as giving the character an objective to get to. A famous example is the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. You never discover what's in the case that shines out on the characters faces but you understand it’s important and that the characters need it. Mise en scene is so important in thriller because a prop can signify everything and then again could just be a McGuffin and mean nothing. It’s whether the director wants you to interpret the prop, setting, costume, make up, expression and lighting and how he or she wants you to interpret them.

7. Mise en scene Furthermore with Mise en scene they will usually choose a location quite ordinary. The idea behind this is extraordinary things happening to ordinary people in ordinary places. In the opening of Donnie Darko we see the main character wake up on a normal road outside a normal town in America. What we see so far is just an ordinary place but the director goes against the normal conventions of thriller and with heavenly music shows this shot. With the church music symbolising a greater power and the character looking over this view it suggests something extraordinary which goes against the ordinary people and places convention. However Donnie Darko isn’t exactly the most conventional film.

8. Iconography Iconography are certain aspects of a genre that we can see in the mise en scene which help us to determine what genre it is. For example a crime scene or murder weapon will show us that the film is probably set around a crime, or a certain crime which will help us figure out that the film is probably going to be a thriller. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU-LzF0lJ5g In this V for Vendetta clip we can see Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving both getting ready to go out. Natalie Portman putting on make up and a smart black dress showing us that she’s probably going out on a date but doesn’t want to seem too informal so she wears black, or it could connote that there is a stigma of darkness that sticks to her character. On the other hand Hugo Weaving is putting on his mask, boots, cape and putting his knives on his belt. Just from seeing him get changed we can see that he is going out to kill someone. Killing being one of the main theme of thrillers, if not the main, is shown to us just from how the character dresses and what props he uses. The props aren’t just singular to the thriller genre though. A mask and knives are very common props in horror.

9. Cinematography: camera shots, angles and movement. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWHnAj4e-EI&feature=related When looking at the shots the DOP director of photography and director has to look at the shot and decide what angle they will have the camera at and where to position it. In this scene of Frozen the director and DOP followed the 180 rule to create meaning in their film through putting the camera over the shoulder of the subjects. This shot makes the audience feel like were experiencing the conversation with them and suspends our disbelief that this isn’t reality. The character who has the shoulder shot is out of focus which makes the audience focus on the other character. This is intentional so that we won’t be looking between characters to see both reactions and what they are both saying but instead we see one character and then the shot cuts to a shot of the other character so we can see their reaction and what they’re saying. This is used commonly in films where the director and editor cut the shots to a fro between characters so the audience can perceive the conversation through both associated points of view. This is a conventional type of cinematography in thriller films and is used in almost every one you will see. It’s a very good technique to build tension if that is the desired effect. It’s common in all films really but what emotion the audience experiences when watching all depends on music, performance, lighting and mise en scene not just cinematography.

10. Thriller conventions In any film there is a structure to follow, as I’ve said before with Todorov’s five stages of narrative or just the structuring of films in acts with act 1 introducing the characters act 2 trying to get back to the state of equilibrium that they were in and act 3 being the conclusion after they get back to some sort of state of equilibrium. In thrillers the first act will usually involve one character or more in a state of equilibrium that gets disrupted by something, usually a crime. For example in Arlington Road Jeff Bridges character is driving along when he has to stop because there is someone in the road walking in front of him, he gets out and discovers the boy has had an accident and his hand is shredded from a firework. This is Jeff Bridges characters equilibrium being disrupted. Later in the film we discover that his wife had been killed in a shootout, giving us the flawed protagonist of the film, very popular in thrillers. In act two of the film the protagonist will try and solve the crime and or get back to the state of equilibrium, again using Arlington road Jeff Bridges character discovers that his neighbour might be a terrorist and tries to find out more researching him and sneaking in his house. In the end of the film however the director tricks the audience because there is no going back to the state of equilibrium because the terrorist wins. This is an unconventional thriller plot development because usually we want the flawed protagonist to win. Disruption of Jeff Bridges equilibrium in Arlington Road.

11. Thriller conventions Also with thrillers the narrative conventions can often be confusing. So for example in the opening of a film we may see the crime has already been committed and we don’t know who is the antagonist and who is the protagonist. Being in the dark like this is often how the audience feels when watching a thriller because the director wants the audience to feel confused. For example in Brick we see shots of a dead girl and a boy looking over the dead body. We don’t know why she’s dead and who killed her and the fact that the boy isn’t calling an ambulance immediately suggests that he is the killer when in reality he is her boyfriend probably just in a state of shock. Another example of keeping the audience in the dark is with the series of Scream films. Scream 1 being mainly horror but 2,3 and 4 being thriller films as well revolve around a woman who is stalked by a psychotic killer. Constantly throughout the films we are given several people with several motives when actually at the end it turns out to be someone the audience never suspected (possibly because they lead the other characters to believe they were dead or in danger or because they were family)

12. Editing Emotion (51%) — Does the cut reflect what the editor believes the audience should be feeling at that moment? Story (23%) — Does the cut advance the story? Rhythm (10%) — Does the cut occur "at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and 'right'" (Murch, 18)? Eye-trace (7%) — Does the cut pay respect to "the location and movement of the audience's focus of interest within the frame" (Murch, 18)? Two-dimensional plane of the screen (5%) — Does the cut respect the 180 degree rule? Three-dimensional space of action (4%) — Is the cut true to the physical/spatial relationships within the diegesis? Walter Murch gives a list of things to preserve when cutting. So when cutting from one shot to another the number one thing to preserve is the emotion the audience is meant to be feeling. So you don’t want to cut from one very sad shot to another hilarious shot because it will put the audience in the wrong emotional state. And so on for story, rhythm, eye-trace, two-dimensional plane of screen and three dimensional space of action, In the next slide I will be discussing how the editor/director of Brick: Rian Johnson edits the opening title sequence following the points above to add to the emotion the audience should be feeling, how the cuts advance the story and the rhythm and pace of the edit to the music.

13. Editing Rain Johnson syncs his cuts to the music well enough to create a montage opening title sequence. Each cut goes from a shot of Joseph Gordon-Levitt to a shot of Emilie de Ravin and it is in sync with when the guitar strums in the music. Editing the shots together like this, with one character lying dead on the floor builds tension and makes the audience feel that JGL might suddenly jump up and go seek vengeance. This puts the audience in an emotional state of sadness/anger. The way that it’s shot really makes the audience feel for JGL and you want him to go out and get revenge for EdR’s death, although being that we don’t know the whole story when watching it we might assume that he JGL is the killer and that puts the audience in a confused emotional state which as I’ve said is very common to thrillers. Also the cuts reflect the story with the use of Graphic match (see above) Rain Johnson cuts from a shot of EdR’s dead arm to a shot of her arm alive. This obviously shows a jump backwards in time in the narrative so we can see what happened before she died, answering some of the audiences questions, this cut advances the story.

14. Sound In films there are non diegetic and diegetic sounds. Diegetic sounds are natural sounds that you can see in the shot. Non diegetic sounds are sounds that are placed into the film in post production. Also every film has to have a soundtrack with music that is either composed for the film or music to which the rights have been bought to be used in the film. Pleonastic sound is often non diegetic and it imitates or reinforces the screen action (I’ll discuss in the next slide on sound how the sound in Psycho uses pleonastic music to reinforce the action)

15. Sound I think why Hitchcock is considered the greatest in thriller is because of how he makes the audience feel when watching it and he gets the audience into the correct emotional state for his film using the actors performance, editing, shot size/angle, mise en scene and sound. With the famous shower scene in Psycho there is a pleonastic sharp screech of the violin as the villain plunges down his knife into the woman. The two sounds are similar to that of a violin sweeping across the strings and a knife sweeping through the air. If you intentionally wanted a sound that was a binary opposite of a knife plunging then you might use a drum beat which would probably be suited best for a gun shot or a punch. Furthermore I think he’s considered the master not because of his great use of sound but also his lack of it. In the scene from The Birds that I mentioned before (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwLiH8bWFdM&feature=related) Alfred Hitchcock uses no soundtrack to accompany the woman entering the house. A conventional way to let the audience know something bad is about to happen would be to have chilling music play as she walks in. However Hitchcock uses no music which in turn surprises the audience more when we discover the dead body, this does exactly what a thriller is meant to do: keep the audience in the dark.

16. Audience expectations Certain aspects of thriller build to certain expectations. As I said before with Hitchcock using no music in a scene the audience gets an expectation that nothing bad will happen in the scene. Usually in a scene they will build tension with the music so the audience expects something bad will happen. These expectations can be met but a lot of the time the expectations will be broken. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts1x6uADFtM In this clip from Silence of the Lambs the use of parallel editing of the police getting ready to burst in the house and the antagonist in the house builds the excitement that the antagonist will get caught. In the end of the scene the expectation is broken as we discover the police are at the wrong house and now as the protagonist is left alone with the antagonist the audience is left to fear for her life.

17. While researching the thriller genre I watched Memento, the whole idea of Guy Pearce having amnesia gave me an idea for what the film I am making the opening title sequence for be about. The film begins with introducing a character (Amy) waking up in the hospital, at her side is another woman who is sleeping. The woman at her side wakes up when the doctors come in and they explain to Amy that she was involved in a house fire with the woman next to her and 3 other people. Amy doesn’t remember anything and has to be explained everything, including the fact that the woman next to her is her best friend. As the story progresses Amy gets back to her life but sometimes when she’s home alone or driving in her car she feels a malicious feeling surrounding her, like someone is watching her. Eventually after not being satisfied with the story she was told and the confusion she has suffered when trying to piece the memories together she does some research on the survivors. Her best friend who has been helping her through this ordeal has a mental disorder that Amy discovers when conducting her research. Eventually with the help of her research Amy discovers that her best friends boyfriend (who was killed in the fire) was leaving her best friend because he and Amy were having an affair. Her best friend burned down the house and then when she was questioned by the police she said that she was part of the fire and had managed to get away before it got too bad to go get help. During all this Amy is made aware hat the other survivors are being killed off (by the best friend to make sure there are no loose ends) and that she will probably be next. In the end she goes to the police and tells them that it’s her best friend and that she is coming after her. In the end the police come back and tell Amy that her friend wasn’t at her house and is now on the loose.

18. Bibliography • The Cutting Edge - The Magic of Movie Editing (2004) Wendy Apple • In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing – Walter Murch published by Silman-James Press. • www.IMDB.com