Thriller Analysis Without Sounds

Audition

The trailer of Audition, we see some typical features of a thriller. For example when the woman’s scars are revealed, we are expecting something sexual as she has previously removed her bra, therefore shocking us. The pulling up of the sheets has been edited and sped up, making it jolty, stopping the sensual and making the revelation more sudden. The contrast between sexual and shocking also emphasizes the scars. The scars imply some violence and the shock suggests secrets, both often featured in thrillers. The lighting is often blue and cold, giving a ‘shivery’ uneasy feel. The blue is used in a sexual scene, which are usually meant to be ‘heated’; therefore we feel that something is not quite right. We see a body bag, giving the impression of murder, a common theme in thrillers. The stabbing which constantly speeds up, giving an impression of obsession and insanity, as if someone is getting carried away or has been wound up, backing up the theme of murder. 

Thriller Sub-genres

What is a Thriller?



They are typically known to create excitement and suspense, a high level of anticipation and severe wracking tension. A successful thriller will keep the audiences 'on the edge of their seats'.the characters usually have some form of conflict related to an event, someone or even themselves. However this subject is usually fairly shadowy or abstract.

Types of Thrillers-


1.Conspiracy thrillers

Also known as ' Paranoid Thriller', it usually includes an amatuer journalist/ investigator who accidentatlly unravels a serious happening or conspiracies, then attracts a lot of attention and usually ends up a hero. It generally includes 'goodies' and 'baddies' and occasionally a love story along side. There are lots of lies rumors propaganda, physiologically interesting audiences.

EXAMPLES OF CONSPIRACY THRILLERS:

• The International
• North by Northwest
• Valkyrie
• The Assassination Bureau

Conspiracy thrillers will usually feature the police or some sort of security organisation e.g. MI6 or CIA. They also feature rumours, propaganda and lies which will create tension between the main character and the other characters. 

2. Political Thriller
These are closely linked to Conspiracy Thriller, however they tend to have more of larger scale backdrop, such as the government. they are based around power struggles, common themes include terrorism, corruption and warfare.

EXAMPLES OF POLITICAL THRILLERS:

• The Man Who Knew Too Much
• JFK
• City Hall

3. Spy Film
Spy films deal with the theme of fictional espionage either in a realistic way or in a fantasy way. The British film industry is famed for spy films with the most famous being the James Bond films and a lot of spy films are based around the British Secret Service.

EXAMPLES OF SPY FILMS:

• 007: Casino Royale
• 007: Die Another Day
• The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Spy films will usually feature government agents and missions. There is always a strong risk of being found out by the enemies and there is always a main enemy in spy films. Spy films offer a mix of escapism, technological thrills and exotic locations e.g. James Bond films. The spy is the main character and is portrayed strongly as a hero figure. There also tends to be a woman involved and a sub-plot of romance between the spy and the woman. 

What We Learnt From The Analysing Credits

From analysing the credits we can learn some things

 

Who should get the credits:

Director 

casting director

film company

actors

director of photography

title of the thriller

music by...

editor

writer
 

It helped us to consider the order of the credits in our thriller. We felt that the title should come at the end, in front of the face of our killer, to start the story of how he got to this point, as the opening sequence will be a flash back.

 

We need to create realistic name for a film company. For example ' Smithy Works'

 

We realised that when filming we should leave areas in the shot for the credits to appear, and if not we should have seperate backgrounds especially for credits.

 

The British films feature the actors names lower down in the list, while an American film may feature the actors first as they are more likely to sell the film.

Analysing credits

We analysed the openign scene of Se7en, Kidulthood and Blue Velvet. We noted when the credits appear, what they were and how They contributed to the movie. 

SE7EN

0.03- Newline Cinema Presents 
0.06- An Arnold Kopelson Production

0.11- A Film By David Findher

0.13- Brad Pitt

0.18- Morgan freeman

0.26- Se7en

0.29-Gwyneth Paltrow

0.33- Richard Rowntree

1.11- Casting by Billy Hopkins

1.16- Music by Howard Shore

1.23- Edited By Richard Francis bruce

1.36- Director of Photography Darius

1.54- Written by Andrew Kevin Walker

KIDULTHOOD

0.11- Directed By Menhaj Huda

0.16- List Of Actors

0.22- Written by Noel Clark

0.27- Kidulthood

 

BLUE VELVET

0.00- Produced By Fred Caruso

0.02- Directed By David lynch

Narrative Action of Our Thriller

1.     Establishing, wide, almost birds eye view shot of a suburban road. Non-diegetic music playing. The road is bright and hyper-real coloured. There are a few cars, houses on either side.

2.     Wide pan shot down the street, giving more perspective to the scene.

3.     Wide shot of the back of a boy walking on the street.

4.     Close-up shot of the shoes of the boy, as a non-diegetic voiceover begins.  He may begin by saying something freakily normal, such as “Today, I had Weetabix for breakfast.”

5.     The voiceover continues as the shots shatter in and out from each other. We see a wide shot of the boy from the side, still walking.

6.     Wide shot of the boy from the other side, as he continues walking.

7.     A shot of some plants or other suburban features.

8.     Extreme close-up of the hand of the boy, twitching and bloody fingers.

9.     We now see a mid-shot of the boy, from the front, for the first time.

10.     The shots continue to shatter in and out of each other, this time pausing on a slightly closer mid-shot of the boy.

11.     An extreme close-up of the lips of the boy, strangely red (bright) and twitching.

12.     A close-up of the boy’s face as he bites his lip.

13.     A tracking shot, going behind the boy from left to right, shows him continuing down the road.

14.     A mid-shot of his feet/legs as he trips, walking on to the curb.

15.     The shatter effect cross cuts to more brightly coloured flowers.

16.     An extreme close-up of his fingers, twitching and drenched in blood, is shown. 

17.     The shatter effect is used again, now switching to an extreme close-up of bright flowers and plants, maybe a mailbox or two.

18.     An extreme close-up of his eyes is shown, also a bit twitchy, showing his nervous disposition.

19.     The screen blanks out as he turns a corner.

Moving Forward With Our Thriller

We have decided to go with a very contrapuntal theme, having everything very fake and unsuspecting.

We will have a very symmetrical shot of an innocent looking teenage boy walking down a long street or drive way, a fair distance away. 

A voice over will begin of him casually talking, almost humorous, of an average day. For instance it may begin, " I had wheetabix for breakfast".

As he gets closer and closer, dark contrasting distorted images with pop up of dead bodies and guns and things to do with his murders

An occasional slow one with an abstract spooky background will come up with some subtitles, then will snap back quickly to the fakery. this contrast will make his world seem even more unrealistic, highlighting his strange mental state.

Subtitles will also appear as he walks down the path in the corners.

Eventually he will, come close up to the camera and say, "so i killed her/him/them. Now they want to catch me. So I'm on the run. They won't catch me. And I won't stop". He will start to run off. This will leave enough suspense for a good storyline.

Thriller Interviews

To help us get some themes, we interviewed some people to see what there favourite thriller was, why this was and how we could incorporate some of those themes into ours. This was to helps progress with our thriller idea.

What we found-

• Women like to have a good looking male role or someone to 'coon' over and the same of men to a female role, as it makes the whole thriller more exciting.
• Also plenty of suspense is needed at the beginning to make them interested in the play, plenty of surprises.

From this feed back we have decided to forward our plans. We want to have a very innocent looking person to play the role of the killer boy. This will comes as a shock when he is revealed.

we want to explore this even more by having contrapuntal sounds and fake colouring as he walks home with a voice over talking about "what happened". Therefore the film will be about the events leading up to "the event".