Section 3: brainstorm of content and classification of film

scene 1: background to the thriller

Thriller codes and conventions

There are many codes and conventions used in thriller films and these codes make the idea of thriller, the codes and conventions which the audience expect to see in every thriller film are fear, tension, danger, heroes, villains, satisfaction, hope and many more.

GK Chesterton

GK Chesterton states that just because thrillers are a modern way of making films that doesn’t mean the idea is trash, we can use modern day problems and influences so that the audience is closer to the film through their own understanding of that time period. Also that the settings for thrillers should be in urban surroundings, modern day cities and props. Using modern surroundings such as city streets brings excitement to these areas, the audience may live in the city and find it shallow and boring, where as thrillers bring this excitement to their streets. The settings in thrillers should be busy, lots of things happening around the story and the plot should be hard to work out for the audience, this is known as aninimity meaning the fear of the unknown. Finally “Poetry of a modern life” changing the times to add tension.

Northrop Frye

Northrop Frye builds up on Chesterton’s critique and adds his own views to the thriller codes and conventions. The hero is often an ordinary person, this is because the audience can relate to the hero, and they will become emotionally attached to the hero because they will see that they are not much different than themselves. The audience will get carried away because YOU are ordinary. The audience are always happy to believe the situations in thrillers because the ideas are similar to romance fiction. He also states that no normal rules have to apply, situations can change, so can morels and understandings. Thrillers should turn the urban cities into an enchanted forest, the unbelievable can happen at any time plus nothing should be what it seems. Good and bad applies in thrillers, if there is a hero there must be a villain.

Jon Cawelti

Jon Cawelti combines both Chesterton and Frye’s codes and conventions, he agrees with their views and also adds to them. Thrillers should be exotic, this means that nothing should belong in our ordinary lives, things should happen which turn everything upside down and inside out by doing this it reveals to the audience a completely different way of looking at their cities and the people in it. All this together makes the city a mystery.

WH Matthews

WH Matthews relates thrillers with the ideas of the mazes and labyrinths of the old ancient fiction stories, by this he means good vs. evil and the bad guys in those ancient stories can be copied into modern fiction. The plot should be like a maze, twist, turns and deception in the plots so that the audience can never figure the plot out to easily. However thrillers need cleugh, a trial, and clue, something for the audience to follow and become involved with the plot themselves. All in all WH Matthews says thrillers should be a puzzling journey to make the audience feel like a detective.

Pascal Bonitzer

Pascal thought that WH Matthews was describing ‘partial vision’. Partial vision is where the audience never see the full picture, never get told the full plot in detail, this keeps certain subjects away from the audience so that it’s harder for them to understand the plot and figure it out. The audience should only be allowed to see so much because if they saw and knew everything from the start there would be no tension and the audience would get bored. Also the narrator picks away at the plot/maze and reveals it to the audience as the story goes along.

Lars Ole Saurberg

Lars agrees with partial vision. Thrillers should deliberately hide key elements away from the audience for the same reasons above. He also states that thrillers should use delay or ‘pro-tracking’ in certain key stages of the films, by doing this its add massive tension for the audience because they may know that something is going to happen but are revealed to it very slowly and often with non-diegetic music to add atmosphere.

Noel Carroll

Noel Carroll says it’s very important to always create questions in thrillers; this will keep the audience thinking about those questions throughout the film and then add tension when the questions are answered. Another code and convention often used in thrillers is whether the hero should live or die and the factor that it may create a lot of suspense and feeling from the audience to witness the hero dying, it may not be morally be right for the hero to die. Another key code is the idea of battling against the odds, as if the hero has a very slim chance of winning over the situation but in the end comes out ontop.

section 2: research into examples of thriller opening scenes

Thriller Analysis

Seven

I have watched the thriller ‘Seven’ directed by David Fincher. This thriller involves two police detectives, one new detective ‘Brad Pitt’ and one detective who is about to retire ‘Morgan Freeman’. They both are on a case after a serial killer who is using the seven deadly sins as his motive. I will be writing about the relative codes and conventions which make Seven a thriller and several micro elements that enhance the film.

The narrative structure is Seven is easily followed by the audience, the film does not jump through time periods to deliberately confuse the audience, its stays at a solid pace so that the audience can feel like detectives themselves. This is crucial for the film to follow because it relies on the audience to be sucked in and to get them thinking.

Seven follows the codes and conventions to make a thriller film; there are many of these codes which make a thriller. Seven is set in the modern world, cities are vital for thrillers because they relate to the audience in great detail. Making the set a city brings an element of excitement and change to the audience’s world; they may live in a city which is dull and boring with not much change happening around them. Thrillers bring this exciting, fast pace action to their ordinary lives in the city. Seven does this brilliantly. Also Seven brings a lot of the new, modern technology to use to hind their killer. Seven uses one of the oldest story telling conventions of all time, good vs. evil. This fight between good and evil is used in every thriller film and most other genres. Seven also relates back to the mythological fiction of the old Greek stories, the example of this is Seven is where the two detectives are in the library looking through old books relating these old stories to their killers actions and motives. These mythological stories are linked with Seven in other ways also, such as trials and clues. Every thriller needs something for the audience to follow, so that the audience can get mentally involved and become a third detective. In Seven the example of this is where a picture is upside down, deliberately done by the killer to leave a trial for the detectives to follow.

Partial vision is used many time in Seven, such as in gluttony scene where the only means to see are to use flash lights, these flash lights only light up certain parts of the rooms in which they are pointed, so this is the only thing the audience see at this time which adds a lot of suspense to the scene because we don’t know what to expect or what is in the rooms in full. Another example of partial vision is when the two detectives are in the killer’s apartment, the apartment is very dingy and dark. They find pictures in the bath tub of the two detectives on a stair case; the killer was right in front of them both taking their pictures. The detectives and audience have no idea of this until these photos are found, this is a very effective way of bringing surprise to the audience and gets them deeper involved. At the end of the film there is a box delivered to a site where the detectives are killer are, the audience do not see what is in the box and by the panic and expressions on the face of the detective this gets the audience dying to know what is in the box, this is a very effective way of using partial vision.

Seven also uses delay and protraction, the example of this is where the two detectives have the killer in the back of their car and they are driving to the desert where the killer says there are two more bodies. This drive is very long, keeping the camera inside the car while they talk about his motives and share a few truths with one another. This drive is delayed for the audience to add major suspense, the audience want to know what is out in the desert but they are stuck in the car listening to them talking, however the speech is very tense which adds to the suspense.

In the desert the cinematography shows the audience what the characters resemble, such as power, fear and who is going to win this battle between good and evil. At first there are low angles of the detectives stood over the killer showing that they are in power of the situation and that they have the killer figured out with no possible way of escaping or winning this battle. However this soon changes completely when the box is delivered, it’s a low angle shot of the box so that the audience do not see what is inside adding suspense and rattling the audience’s brain to imagine what it can be, what is in the box is very significant to the way the twist unfolds. The audience then learn that it was the head of one detective’s wife; this has completely changed the situation and has given the killer the upper hand and the cinematography shows this by then making the killer in a low angle shot giving him the power prospective. The camera then moves to a close up of the killer’s face which is steady and calm representing the killer’s importance and the fact that he is now in control. Whereas the camera work on the detective whose wife has been killed is hand held and shaky showing to the audience his emotion, the detective is now very scattered and confused and in great pain. This is a brilliant power change in the story and grasps the audience by its shear turn of events.

The set and props used in Seven are classic to a detective thriller, the city is very dirty and dull showing the depression and the realities of living in a congested city, it’s also mostly raining adding to the feel of gloom and doom. This relates to the audience who live in the city because it’s something they will wake up to everyday and they can connect with this by their own experiences. The way the two detectives look is also very different, one is very clean cut and well organised showing to the audience that he takes care of everything that he does in himself and at work. Whereas the other detective is much the opposite, he has more of a rough look and is less organised. These add a moral dilemma to the film, are these two detectives going to be able to work with each other or are they different in such a way they will clash and fall apart due to their attitudes. The costumes are also classic, long coats are used by the detectives also with a holster strapped to their waists carrying a gun, one of the detectives also wears a hat adding to this ‘detective’ look. The killer when caught is in a jump suit worn by criminals under police arrest, another classic prop used to signify power and place. There are many props used as evidence such as photos, fingerprints, books, bodies and everyday furniture. There is also use of helicopters and full riot police during the film which adds tension to the severity of the situations.

Seven uses sound as a means to add tension and make the audience feel like they are present in the film. Often there is eerie non-diegetic music in the scenes to add suspense and get the audience emotionally involved and know that something meaningful is about to acre. The opening credits have this much distorted music which has no real rhythm but makes the audience feel slightly disturbed and lets them know from the start that this film has a form of madness or dementia. The opening credits are creepy and disturbing also, the graphics used are such things as warped faces and bodies, rugged hand writing and removal of finger tips also photo development but done in such a way that it looks wrong or possessed. Its coloured with black, white and deep reds this is showing to the audience already that good and evil are involved through black and white, plus through the deep reds we get a sense of danger and madness.

State Of Play

This film is directed by Kevin McDonald and was release in April 2009. In the first scene of ‘State of Play’ we see a normal city night with people shopping with their families and everything is calm, this all changes very suddenly when a man bursts into the street knocking over people and getting hit by cars. The man carries on running through shops and back alleys. He is then shot by a mysterious gun man, who also kills a witness.

State of play sticks to strong thriller codes and conventions, such as a urban setting and the relation between normal people in a normal city and bringing this exciting fast pace action to their streets. The scene also includes a police siren right at the very beginning, this lets the audience know immediately that this film has something to do with crime or the police. There are moments of tension and questions, when the man is sprinting through shops and makes the audience ask why is he running, when the man is hiding in bust bins he has heavy breathing adding to the suspense of what may come. There is also use of exotic objects, the gun man is holding a silver briefcase and this briefcase catches the audiences eye, why does he have it? What is in it?

The camera movement in this scene is very clever, at first the camera is calm and watching people in the street, then suddenly this man sprints into the shot and causes chaos. Using hand held cameras and shaking along with the movements of the running man the camera work is able to grasp the audience and make them feel like they are running alongside this man. The camera at first takes one long shot, following this man while he runs across a road, gets hit by a car and ruins a shop sprinting through it, this use of cinematography makes the scene look more natural and involves the audience at a deeper level. There is a low angle shot of the gun man giving him this powerful prospective over the running man.

This scene is very good at getting the audience involved, where the running man is sat around the bins and the camera is peeping through the cracks between the barrels, this again makes the audience feel as if they are there, peeping through the cracks and spying on this man. The costumes are dark on the gun man and running man suggesting this bad guy image, where as the man on the bike which is shot in the back, is in bright clothes which portray his innocence and vulnerability. There is a silhouette of the running man across a roof, he is in darkness but behind him is the bright busy city buildings; this is showing the audience his personal fear, one place and one man in danger in a vast bright city. There are use of such props as guns to show life and death, power and weakness.

The sounds in ‘State of Play’ are typical for a city landscape, cars, walking, sirens, people talking then a scream from a woman and everything gets louder due to this man running. The audience can hear the man’s struggle through his frantic breathing and groans whilst he is running. The sirens and helicopter at the beginning give a clue to what type of film this is. Then we have the gun shots, which are silenced but add to this feel of a silent killer in the city.

There are many quick cuts in this scene to add to the feel of franticness and danger and then the much longer shots for involvement. There is a good use of match on action even though things may not be clean cut. This also is used with the characters, the running man is quite dirty and panicking whereas the gun man is clean shaven and wearing nice looking business clothes. The audience get a good look at the briefcase to let them know that this has a great importance.

Red Eye

Directed by Wez Craven and released in 2003, Red eye follows a linear structure because there seems to be a solid understanding of time of story, there are no jumps through time or miss direction.

Red Eye follows typical codes and conventions for a thriller film, partial vision is used when it comes to the face of a man who steals a wallet, this is done very well by use of shallow focus and looking over this man’s shoulder. Partial vision is also used with a fish crate which has is being delivered, this crate contains a big silver box which the audience have no idea what it is or for. The scene also asks questions for the audience regarding the wallet and why it’s needed, the crates and the people involved. The scene also takes place in a urban environment at night time.

The camera work lets the audience know what’s important in the story such as the wallet and the crate, plus we see blue prints of buildings which are not being used for the right reasons, the camera shows a montage of different events and situations but does not stray away from time. There are photos in the house where the wallet is taken and the camera shows family photographs around the wallet, showing the audience that this person is a family man.

The costumes can resemble importance in the story, the man who steals the wallet in wearing a suite showing the audience his importance to the story whereas the work man opening the crate look average and come across as ‘just guys’ with no real importance. The innocence of the fish box is ironic to the fact that it contains something important and what seems dangerous, this is partial vision because the audience have no idea what is inside this crate. There is a warmer light when interior is shown such as the family house, then when the crate is being opened there is a darker light which gives a bad feel to the scene. The man who steals the wallet seems to be experienced in what he is doing and cleans the wallet out, only to keep the things that he needs, he seems to be efficient and professional.

There is use of non-diegetic music to add suspense and gives of a eerie atmosphere, suggesting to the audience that these are actions with bad intent. The sounds are speedy and fast giving pace to the scene such as planes taking off. The camera is forever moving, this gives the scene a rushing affect, and everything has to be done quickly for the fear of getting caught. There is a shot of the Lux Atlantic Hotel from a low angle, showing its importance to the film, we are yet to know what this hotel is going to be used for but are given a incentive that this building is of significance to the plot.

There are simple graphics used in Red Eye such as a black screen with white text, however this simplicity may come across as very serious.

Strangers on a Train

‘Strangers on a train’ was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and was release in 1951. This film follows a linear structure which is in chronological order. This is about the journey of two people who meet on a train.

Stranger on a train also follows many codes and conventions which make a thriller such as partial vision because we only see the bottom half of the characters from the start, its set in modern times with modern influences such as taxis and clothing, the sets as busy and urban. The main code which is picked up on is the form of a journey between two ordinary people.

The camera work is mostly all low shots of the lower body and concentrates on the feet mostly. There is a good transition in the tracking of the camera; the camera becomes the train through tracking shots and being at the front of the train while it’s moving down the tracks. The camera creates this symmetry between the two characters, the same shots as each other but from different sides.

This symmetry between the two characters creates this crossing action, the two characters are leading up to the point where they meet, the both cross legs and touch each other’s feet. The tracks for the train also show this crossing action between the characters. Both of the men seem to be the opposites of each other, one is more businesslike with smart dark shoes and briefcase, whereas the other man is wearing fancy shoes and has a bit more flair about his appearance, however we only get to see the legs and feet. We see tennis rackets and briefcases, old cars and the same use of taxi firms, two completely different people but in some ways connected.

There is a slow non-diegetic violin instrumental, this sounds like a big budget orchestra which adds depth to the scene, the music is pretty quirky and has a comedy value to it. This non-diegetic music lasts for the entire scene. We also hear a range of diegetic sounds such as trains on the tracks and an announcer giving out the train times, there is also the sounds of the two men walking, the sound of their shoes are sharp and smart.

The editing in ‘Strangers on a Train’ is very clever in places, the use of tracking shots switching back and forth between the two men adds to this symmetry and crossing action. There is a good use of dissolving shots when one of the men is walking through the station, the shot dissolves into the tracks showing the journey ahead and showing the crossing in the tracks. There is a good graphic match from one shot to the next.

section 4: Audience research- and research into BBFC film classification system

Questionnaire
1. Gender
Male
Female

2. Age
15-17
18-20
21 +

3. Do you know what a thriller genre is?
Yes
No

4. Do you watch thriller films?
Yes
No

5. Which type of thriller film do you enjoy the most?
Psychological
Action
Creepy/Scary
Supernatural
Mix all a few or all

6. Do you think children can add a scary factor in the right places?
Yes
No
If yes, what do you think is the creepiest thing for them to be doing?




7. Do you think the idea of a ‘normal’ problem such as domestic violence to be more disturbing as a UFO or ghost?
Yes
No

8. What do you expect from a thriller film most of the time?







9. Do you think a thriller involving domestic abuse would be appropriate?
Yes
No

10. Do you think a old warn out teddy bear can add to the feel of neglect?
Yes
No


Gender



There are more males here then females, this could mean that the majority of the resulsts we collected are biased from a male point of view. This could result in making a film that is more suited to the male gender rather then a female. This reasearch could have been more effective if we had asked the same amount of males and females in our data.

Age



Here we have asked the majority of people in the age range of 15-17 this could mean that our film is more suited for the people in this age range. This could be as the majority of people we asked was in college so most people are within that age range in college. This data could be seen as useful as most people around this age tend to enjoy the thriller genre.

Do you know what a the thriller genre is?



This is probably one of the most important questions that we have asked as it allowed us to continue asking the people questions who would understand what they were about. This question also told us how many people would know what genre the film was if we were to show it to a real audience showing.


Do you watch thriller films?




The question in hand made sure that the people we were researching actually watched thriller films. This is as they may understand what a thriller is but not have enough experience in watching thrillers to answer the questions ahead in the questionnaire. This question again made sure that are information was as useful as possible.


Which type of thriller film do you enjoy the most?



Most people who answered this question chose creepy/scary and psychological. This tells my group and me that if we wanted are film to be one of the most enjoyable for the audience we should try and make our film fit in to these categories. The least popular option was a mixture of subgenres; this tells us that most people prefer thriller films that fit in to one clear subgenre.


Do you think children can add a scary factor in the right places?




This question tells us that subsequently if we add children in to our thriller film this may add to the scary effect that was the most popular choice in the subgenres. This means that our film would be more appealing to our target audience if we were to add the factor of children.



If yes, what is the creepiest thing for them to be doing?




The most popular choice here was singing, but we feel that this may be quite difficult to fit in to a thriller film. The second most popular choice was staring. We agree and feel that if the child were to stare in to the camera this may bring across this tense, creepy subgenre to life and make our target audience enjoy the film more.

Do you think that the idea of a 'normal' problem such as domestic abuse is more scary then a UFO or ghost?



Normal’ problems seem to be more scary then supernatural ones. We can use this to our advantage in out thriller film as creating supernatural things on film would be more difficult. This means that we can make the film easier and still appeal in the right way to the audience by using a ‘normal’ problem within the story plot.


what do you expect from a thriller most of the time?



Suspense was the most popular option within this question. This heightens the view that we should use should thriller codes and conventions such as patracted outcome and darkness. This may make the film tenser and make it feel more attractive to the audience. As this question was open, it meant that the person filling in the questions could put whatever they felt. This suggests to us that we should try and include all of the above in our films.

Do you think a thriller involving domestic abuse would be appropriate?



This question seems to have an equal result on ‘yes’ and ‘no’. This could mean that many may not feel it appropriate but there is a slightly higher result on ‘yes’ meaning it could be appealing to the higher portion of the audience. The results from this question provide the group with pause for thought as to whether to include this in our film. It could be that we include this within the plot but not in the opening scene.

Do you think an old worn out teddy bear can add to the feeling of neglect?



This question tells us that we should include an old worn out teddy to add to this feel of neglect. This may put across the films ideas more clearly. Hopefully this may also tie in with the other audience wants, such as scary/creepy and suspense.