How does thriller conventions build up suspense?

How does the use of thriller conventions build up suspense?

John Carpenter the director of ‘the fog’ was highly influenced by the works of Alfred Hitchcock the director of ‘psycho’, and was intrigued by his use of techniques in creating and building up suspense. Therefore i have analysed John Carpenters opening of the fog, as i believe it contains all the conventions needed in building up suspense.

The Fog opening scene

The opening starts with a shot of a ticking, brass pocket watch that is swinging in the darkness. The camera then pans across to two kids, whose faces and bodies are mostly in darkness, only slightly lit up by a campfire. The camera then cuts back to the pocket watch, which is then quickly snapped shut and the non diegetic sound it very loud compared to the silence beforehand. This has the potential to make many people jump. The whole of the opening is very suspenseful, with kids and a old man sitting round a camp fire on the beach just before midnight. Everything is pitch black accept a camp fire that has lit up their faces. The use of kids shaded by the darkness, creates the feeling of vulnerability and then campfire creates a kind of warmth feeling, possibly representing safety and protection. The use an old man telling old ghost stories, about the beach that they are all on now, creates a sense of tension and fear. The camera towards the end of the first sequence, pans upwards towards the pitch black sky. It is the perfect suspenseful opening, and grabs your attention with its original idea.

Psycho opening shower scene

The opening scene starts of with the camera tracking the movement of a young, attractive woman. Several medium shots are used when she is washing in the shower, and the fact that she is nude makes her more vulnerable. An over the shoulder shot is used, when the camera focuses in on a dark shape behind the shower curtain which gradually draws closer and closer. This creates and builds up a great amount of suspense and tension and also makes the audience feel on edge. The curtain is vigorously pulled back to a reveal a dark, shady outline of what appears to be a woman. The fact that the killers identity is not revealed adds to the enigma and creates more suspense and mystery for future scenes, and also creates this on going suspicion that there is more than one killer involved. The camera cuts backwards and forwards to a medium shot of the shady, shape of the killer, and then to close up of the woman’s mouth screaming. The music starts when the shower curtain is pulled swiftly back, therefore the sound of high pitched string instruments compliments and emphasise the effect of the shower curtain. The use of the violins, adds to the drama. When the killer is stabbing the woman, the fact that she is in the shower, creates the feeling of being her trapped, therefore hopeless. The close up of the hand, and the use of the music no more, but only the non-digetic sound of the shower water in the background, creates and eerie mood and atmosphere. The medium shot of the woman sliding down the wall with a look of hopelessness on her face creates sympathy. When a transition shot is used to show the plug fade into the eye of the woman, and then the camera then draws away from the eye slightly turning, creating a sort of disorientated feeling as it shows the moment when life is being drained out of the woman. The extreme close up of the eye, is very personal and therefore the audience will feel more of an emotional connection and sympathy towards the woman who lay dead. The scene over all was very quick, and included two contrasts of the violent murder and the quiet stillness of shots where she is slowly dying. The fact that everything is very calm, in the final shots, gives the audience time to reflect on what that have just seen.

The opening of the shinning


The opening scene of the shining started of with many extreme long shots of deserted, dramatic countryside. This sets the atmosphere and creates the creepy feeling of being alone. There is the constant eerie sound track in the background, which suggests the genre of the film is either going to be thriller or horror. When a car comes into focus, the camera pans across the countryside, tracking the movement of the car from a birds eye view. The car is also shown driving across a narrow road, high up amongst the cliff tops. This shows that the people in the car are in potential danger and not secure in their surroundings. The fact that the identity of the person or peoples in the cars are not revealed, builds up suspense as you don’t know whose in the car, what there doing, where there going and for what reasons are they going there for. The audience is left intrigued to what is going to happen in the next sequence, as the opening scene has not given a lot of information away. This is the key to gripping the audiences attention and building up suspense.


The opening of Vacancy


The music in the opening scene is slow paste string instruments, which creates an eerie mood. The first shot is an extreme close up of a number plate of a car, then the car gradually pulls away from the camera to reveal that the object was indeed a car. The shot then cuts to an establishing extreme long shot of the car, traveling through a narrow road that appears to be woodland. It is pitch black and only the car headlights can be seen in the distance. This immediately creates the spooky, sinister atmosphere, and again suggests that the people in the car are in danger as they are alone and in the middle of know where. Peoples expectations suggest that bad things happen at night in the woods, when people are alone and not in there natural surroundings. There are several close ups of the faces of the man and women in the car, which means the audience feel more involved and as if they are actually in the situation with them as the shots are very personal. The first character introduced to us is a man, whose face is only slightly lit. His body gestures suggest that he is tired therefor aggravated. The audience will immediately connect tiredness with car accidents, therefore puts the two peoples lives at risk. The music stops when the camera is focused in on the people inside the car, so that the non-digetic sound of the car wheels screeching and zooming down the road when trying to avoid contact with a racoon, is much more powerful when compared to the silence beforehand. This has the potential to make people jump, and feel unnerved. The audience can immediately establish distancing between the two characters, through their dialogue which suggests that the two characters don’t get on with one another. The use of the knife to cut the apple, can be symbolic of death and torture, which could possibly be a feature in the future scenes. When it comes to the point of view shots, of what the man is seeing when driving and looking out the window, the camera is not in focus, which creates the feeling of disorientation which in this case has the effect on the audience of creating the feeling of tiredness. This is a common factor, that a lot of people in general would have experienced, therefore the audience can relate to the situation. A high angle, long shot is used to establish an old, creepy gas station in the middle of know where. There is slight music in the background, when the couple approach the gas station in their car. The sound adds to the creepiness of the gas station. When the camera uses close up shots of the couples faces within the car, is makes the whole thing seem so much more personal, as they are both in an enclosed space. This is where the audience can make a connection to the characters, therefore what happens to them in the future scenes, will have an impact on the audience. When the camera reveals a medium shot of the man in the car from a side on view, non-Digetic sound is used to emphasise the movement of a man outside the car who swiftly jumps up at the window. This is deliberately done, with the intentions of making the audience jump, as beforehand the couple where focused on looking at a map. It is more easier to make someone jump when they are focused on a task, rather than when there not. The fact that the couple are in a small confined space means that, the audience is also drawn in, when the couple are looking at the map. The man outside the car is all dressed in black, which is a very sinister colour and makes him appear as if he has just emerged from the darkness of his surroundings. This creates the feeling of suspicion. The nervous giggle mainly coming from the women shows that she was uptight and unnerved by the man suddenly appearing. This shows also that she is now more relieved and relaxed, therefore is comfortable in the mans presence, therefore she is not suspicious of him.

audience expectations

From our research on the pearl and dean website we were able to see that thrillers mostly appeal to the male genders age between 16 to 30. We looked at certain aspects that create and build up suspense we would be able to include in our opening. We generally looked at public expectations of what conventions they expect to see in a thriller.

target

photos of settings and actors

As a group we brainstormed ideas of where to shoot the opening of our thriller. We came to the decision to film at sidcup place as it was outdoors and our college as we needed somewhere that looked like a working environment. We photographed the places before we filmed it so we could analyse how it would look on camera and if it would be ok for our opening. We took the photos at all different angles so that we could see what would be the best angles to film from. Then from the photos we decided what kind of mise-en-scene we would like for our opening. After this we then started to shoot our thriller.

prelium task

posters from films we analysed

What lies beneath
The music begins at a slow tempo and speeds up towards the end. It also cross cuts to scenes back to a big house. This emphasizes what the film is about. The pace of the film also becomes faster as it goes on and black outs are used in between scenes to build up suspense.

Vertigo
The music starts of as fast and racy. Then an establishing shot is used of the city. It is dark and gloomy and the people are in silohette. Then towards the end there are close ups of the main actors face. This establishes who the main characters of the film are. The voices of the people speaking are drowned out. This signifies that what they are saying is not important so the audience focus more on the action.

Gone baby gone
The music starts of as slow ophera style music and a narrater is illustrating the story at the beginning. The narrater stops and there are people talking over the music about a girl that has gone missing. This is done so the audience can establish what the film is about. The music slowly starts to speed up towards the end. It also quickley cuts to different scenes of people talking about the child. The titles are also done in luminous blue colours. This is so it stands out.

story board

Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions if real media products?

The beginning sequence of our thriller has the typical conventions of a thriller film. It consists of many suspensful and close up shots of our characters anxiously awaiting for an envelope. We then have a soundtrack of heavy rock music which then changes to mysterious music playing in the background which adds to the suspense of the opening. We chose this type of music as this is what is expected from our audience as we foun out from our questionaire. Our opening was inspired by many other thriller openings which I have stated before in my research page. In our sequence we feature many shots of two of the main characters faces and pictures of them. This adds to the mystery of the film and is a key moment as they are communicating through there eyes. This also keeps the audience guessing as to who these people are and why they keep appearing. We did this because through research we found out that our audience expect to see m expect to see mystery in a thriller.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our target audience for our film would be  teenagers and young people in there twenties as many of the characters are played by  young, new, fresh faced actors/actresses. It is only rated a 12 as we are trying to appeal to teenagers from the age 12 and upwards but through research we found out that mostly all ages enjoy watching thrillers so we expect to people of all ages to watch our film.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our product is aimed at becoming a mainstream film. Therefore we would like it to be shown in mainstream cinemas for example odeon. We think this is the best idea so our film gets to become more exposed and therefore our film becomes more profitable.

Who would be the audience for your media product.

By the evidence from our questionaires and bar charts we have seen that it is mostly males that go to see thriller films all ages. Also we have seen that seemed to be more attracted to films that are suspenseful and involve mystery and use of modern technology

How did you attract/address your audience?

We provided 20 people both male and female with questionaires to fill so we would know what conventions they expect to see in a thriller film. We found out that it was mostly suspense and murder so we decided to base our film around these features.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

Many techniques were used and different equipment was used throughout the production of our film. For example the camcorder was put on a tripod to film most of our scenes. I have never before used a tripod for the camera but I found it very useful as it stopped the camera from shacking and helped to keep it still for the serious scenes. All our footage was transfered onto final cut pro which was useful as this helped us add titles and music and put our scenes in the right place. We also used live type to transfer all our text onto our film. All of this helped me learn how to edit.

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I learnt how to use software  for editing and how to transfer music and writing to our film. We wanted to create something that was fun to watch and entertaining. We achieved this by experimenting with different techniques and software to make it presentable. For example we used many different shot types and editing techniques to make it look more proffessional. For our music we tried to create something that had a mysterious feel to it and that built up tension. We did not want something that was slow as it would sound boring and make the audience lose interest and the film so we chose something that was fast and pacey.

Research

For the beginning of our thriller we researched into several different film openings which we thought would best suit ours. Some of the film openings we looked at were:

Vertigo directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958

What lies beneath directed by Barbera Toennies in 2001

Gone Baby Gone director Ben Afleck in 2007

The chiller Theatre Expo Video Vol.1 directed by John Paul Fedele and Micheal Raso in 1992

From analysing these film openings we came to decide upon ours.