Thrillers:
For my A2 coursework task I
have chosen to do a sequence from a film, the film genre I have chosen is
thriller this is because thrillers depend on the audience’s attention to what
is happening on the screen as in, thrillers use specific elements to manipulate
the audience to feel something or act in a way. For example, in the movie ‘Goodfellas’ by Martin Scorsese , actor Joey Pesci plays a very violent
gangster called Tommy DeVito, in this seen, the low lighting and happy music lulls the audience into a false
sense of security. As their laughing and joking about reminisces, Tommy changes
the mood by asking Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) why he is funny the music becomes
quieter and the aggressive tone of Tommy’s voice creates angst or a nervous
feeling in the audience because of what we have been told about Tommy already.
Thriller films can be broken
down into many sub-genres such as,
crime thrillers, spy thrillers and physiological thrillers.
Physiological thrillers such as ‘The Game’ by David Fincher use techniques such
as mind games stalking, confinement/death-traps, horror-of-personality, and
obsession. A prime example of this is in the scene where the protagonist Nicholas Van Orton comes home to find a clown laid in the same
clothes as his farther was wearing when he committed suicide, these mind
games make the audience have to question “ how” and “ why “ this is
happening. These audience moving techniques provides the sudden rush of
emotions, excitement, sense of suspense that drive the narrative sometimes
subtly with peaks and drops and sometimes at a fast pace that makes the audience
“grip to the edge of their seat”.
The characters of a thriller genre movies are normally,
criminals, stalkers, assassins, innocent people menaced women, with the
protagonist being an everyday citizen or honourable police officer the protagonist
could; face either his death or the death of someone else, for example in the
film ‘True Romance’ by Quentin Tarantino , the protagonist is constantly on the
run from Christopher Walken and his
Goons.
Another
character element is that
the antagonist is cleverer/stronger that
the protagonist e.g. the movie Seven, where the protagonist Brad Pitt is outwitted by the antagonist as he leads him on a quest for nothing resulting in the death of
his wife.
Thrillers also manipulate the audience by using back stories
or go on a journey with they the
protagonist, making the audience route
for that person during violent scenes or be upset if that person were to die,
an example of this is ‘Taxi Driver’ by Martin Scorsese, we follow the
protagonist as he starts work as a taxi driver, watch how lonely and upset he
gets, until he takes matters into his own hands when he wants to "
clean" the streets up, the scene is
very violent, in one part Robert De Nero
blows a man’s hands to pieces and shoots him the face, but instead of
be disgusted and wanting to turn
the whole movie off, we are
gripped and want to see what happens to him.
The movie I’m doing is a Crime Thriller movie, where a woman and child
are abducted by a venomous villain, in which the protagonist has to rescue
them. Using elements from ‘No Country For Old Men’ by the Coen Brothers, the antagonist
creates tension for the audience by being so quiet. Having silent scenes, where
only a few sounds can be heard, but very loud, e.g. gun shots, punches or
people screaming, makes the scene more
scary the longer the pause is before the action happens. No Country For Old Men
uses this technique very well in one scene where the protagonist is trying to
be quiet as possible so the antagonist doesn’t find him. The antagonist is
checking doors and is slowly creeping up on the protagonist. The cuts between the two, as well as the film being silent at this part creates the
impression that the antagonist has cornered the protagonist, until he opens the
door to find there are only other residents. Using the gripping “edge of seat " emotion you get from quiet scenes like that
and dramatic irony, knowing what is
going to happen before the character
does will make my movie have those stereotypical thriller elements that work so well in
drawing the audience into the diegesis.
I am also going to attack the
emotional value of family in the audience,
as when I’ve seen films where son and daughters have died, it hasn't
affected me when i watch it but when my father watches, he is emotionally upset
as he puts his own son where the protagonist is. In film such as ‘Taken’ by Pierre
Morel, the father is trying to get her daughter back, families and parents can
relate to this making it more horrific than it is as the child has been
abducted in a foreign country and is nowhere to be found. I am using this
element in my film, using low angle shots and
fast passed cuts, when the gangsters in my film steal a child, it will
use that family connection to bring parents out of their own comfort zones.
There is some aspects
I am not going to use, in many thriller movies I have seen, there is a resolution;
a sense of justice or vengeance that
happens in the end, in many films such
as the ones I have talked about in the end everything is resolved and
people go back to the lives. In my film
the killing of the antagonist is
purely by accident, and as the protagonist takes the girl home, it leaves it on
a subtle cliff hanger and creates the question “ well what is he going to do now” as the mafia
are going to be after him for what he has done. This breaks the conventions of
both thriller and gangster films as the good guy’s e.g. the police or the
protagonist doesn’t win.
