Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back, I think I have vastly improved my filming skills. I have learnt to use camera angles to add atmosphere and emotion to the shots in my thriller.
My preliminary task consisted of mainly some bird's eye view shots, medium close up shot, tracking shot and shot-reverse shot, while my thriller consisted of all these previously mentioned shots but we added some long shots, handheld pan, low angled, handheld tracking, point of view and over the shoulder shots.
As i changed the software i was editing on from Adobe in our prelim task to iMovie on my personal computer, I gained a basic knowledge on how to work both of these softwares, but managed to deepen my knowledge and refine my ability on using iMovie.
I have also learnt a lot about differentiating between various target audiences and different ways of targeting these specific audiences, for example via the internet.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
'Voyeur' is an independent low budget film, which is aimed to attract alternative, niche audiences, as it is not a four-quadrant mainstream blockbuster.
I think that companies like, for example, Warp films would be the best company to distribute our film, because it handles the distribution of independent movies.
Audiences would be attracted by 'Voyeur''s suspenseful and bitter realistic storyline and the character's strong personalities rather than the use of special effects, expensive locations and high profile names in the film industry (famous actors, directors, producers etc).
Like Animal Kingdom, the hype for our thriller film could be heightened by advertising on main social networking websites such as Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter. This would be a cheap way of targeting a large amount of people as most teenagers have access to these websites, so this would be an easy and cheap way to catch their attention. Also, they can easily share trailers/teasers/images and so on, and spread the word.
One could also pout adverts on youtube.com, various cinema websites like 'picture house cinemas' or online streaming websites.
I think Picture House, who operate a line of 18 independent theatres throughout the UK, would be a good line of of cinema's to show and advertise 'Voyeur' in. In Norwich, this would be 'Cinema City'.
I think 'Voyeur' would also gain attention and appreciation by our targeted fanbase by being released via various film festivals, like Sundance, Raindance or the London Independent Film Festival.
Various film rental companies, like LoveFilm and Studiocanal, could offer to stream 'Voyeur' to their audiences.
Or obviously, there is also the option of releasing the film straight to DVD, but I think this would not be the most effective distribution method for our film and it would not gather enough attention from viewers.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Gender
Our thriller conforms to the stereotype that the man is the stalker and the woman is the sort of victim or the pray.
She isn't really a femme fatale and this is challenging the idea that women in thrillers tend to either only be a femme fatales or irrelevant characters, because thriller films and altogether the media nowadays are ruled by men mostly.
A good example for this is Eve in Once Upon a Time in America. She is the victim of the law when she is shot by the corrupt police officers who are actually seeking to kill/catch her gangster lover.
Another good example is Josh's girlfriend in Animal Kingdom, who is killed by Pope, J's uncle, who then carries out her corpse lays it down to rot in the garden, so as to hide her death.
The stereotype of dominant men which is reflected upon in our thriller is originally influenced by Norman Bates in 'Pyscho'.
He is also shown in a predatory, animalistic role as he preys on Marion Crane, 'Crane' being a type of bird.
Other than in all these examples, in our thriller, the girl is not objectified or glamourised because she is mainly completely covered, but she still seems unable to shake off the behaviour of her stalker, which means there must be some deeper reason for his obsession.
Social class
The first time you see the girl, in the scene when she's walking along the beach, you could think that, based on her costume and the situation, she could be from the working class.
Maybe also because she's at the beach on a morning, meaning maybe she doesn't go to school?
or maybe she's on the beach thinking about/trying to run away from some criminal act he's done?
But then the second environment you see her in, she's well dressed and looks quite sophisticated walking into the library after which you then see her sitting at a computer in what the audience could suspect is either an ordinary library or a school/university library- either way, you can assume that she's in education. The location and the atmosphere reflect her in a slightly more middle class social situation.
The region
Our thriller shows Norfolk's beautiful coast in quite a melancholic/mysterious atmosphere.
Mood of the time
I think our story taps into the Zeitgeist of contemporary Britain by showing how new technologies are influencing the youth's lives more and more.
The storyline shows a young man stalking a teenage girl through the internet and he contacts her via e-mail, which is a very modern and new method, but for us teenagers by now completely habitual.
Pretty much every teenager in Britain has access to the internet nowadays and young people are expected to have an e-mail address or even a Facebook account, so this could happen to anyone.
It's amazing how much information any stranger can access about one specific person purely through their virtual internet existence on Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Email etc.
This is why i think our thriller would appeal to most teenagers, because it is such a easily possible situation.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The main character in our thriller is a seventeen year old girl named 'Rihannon Hayleys' (short Ree).
This name was inspired by the main character Hayley Stark in the 2005 canadian indie film 'Hard Candy'.
This film shows a 14-year old girl who meets a 32-year old man on the internet, suspecting him to be pedophile. She therefore slips an anaesthetic into his drink, ties him up to a chair and when we awakes, starts to torture him.
Rihannon's first name shortens to 'Ree'. This name is a reference to the lead girl character in Winter's Bone, also named Ree.
Our girl's costume was also inspired by the Ree in Winter's Bone, being slightly used up and dirty. Ree Dolly's clothes reflect her hard upbringing and broken family situation, she dresses not to impress but to survive, with clothes that keep her warm and protected by the cold, rather than make her look good. The costume our girl Ree Haileys is wearing beach scene in Voyeur is heavily influenced by this. However it is also a reflection of casual slightly american-urban-streetwear inspired casual teenage clothing.
One of the locations we used in our thriller is a beach very similar to that in "The Piano".
An important generic thriller convention we approached in our thriller is the scenes taking place in unglamorous locations and locations with wide open spaces. As my teacher explained to me, the brooding sky and sea references the pessimistic and threatening mood associated with the film noir. Personally, I think we have managed to mirror the dark atmosphere of the film noir times nicely in our thriller, mainly during the beach scene, using effects like the 'vignette' to blacken the edges of the shot and adjusting the saturation and contrast to create a perfect greyness.
A shot from Jane Campion's 1993 'The Piano'
A shot from West Runton beach in our thriller
Its mysterious atmosphere is set through the fog and clouds in the early hours of the january winter's day. The grey sky and gloomy surroundings helped add a quite sad, but dreamy effect to the scenes we shot out in West Runton beach.
A shot from the sea in West Runton from our thriller
A shot from the Essex marchers in Terry Windsor's 'Essex Boys'
A similar location which inspired us are the Essex Marchers in the 2000 thriller "Essex Boys", when Jason Lock leaves a man behind in the middle of nowhere in the marchers after having beaten him up and showering his face in acid.
The West Runton beach we used alternates between areas of cold, wet sand, big, strong stones and hard concrete.
It is quite hard to walk on barefoot, like Ree is doing. This mirrors how hard the path is that lays in front of her int he next few days according to the rest of the plot, when she finds out the she is being stalked by someone very unexpected.
Parallel to the fact that we live in Norfolk and we chose to film our thriller close to home, so if we needed to add some scenes (which we actually also ended up having to return to and film some more), we could easily access our filming location, we were also inspired by the 2009 film 'The Scouting Book for Boys', which also takes place on the Norfolk coast.
Another thriller in which a woman is alone, vulnerably seeking help on a beach is "Jeopardy", which also helped inspire our initial idea of the girl in this particular location.
Quentin Tarantino is famous for using brilliant intertexual references in all of his films.
These may vary from obvious references like naming characters after influential artists (In Inglourious Basterds, the alias name Sgt. Donny Donowitz uses is named after cult Italian director "Antonio Margheriti". Also, the surname of the character Omar Ulmer is a reference to German Expressionist filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer) or the use of music from spaghetti westerns and 1950s noir thrillers, to very subtle references like the Calabash Meerschaum pipe, which the detective character Hans Landa smokes in Inglourious Basterds, being the exact same pipe that detective Sherlock Holmes is know to use.
1960 drama by Michelangelo Antonioni
Tranatino's 2009 adventure war thriller
Also, almost all of Tarantino's films display the copyright info in small roman numbers directly under the title of the film in the opening credits. This is an homage to many films produced in the 1960s and 70s, which Tarantino greatly admires.
Tarantino's use of the Ennio Morricone composed soundtrack in Kill Bill Vol. 2 when the bride escapes from being buried alive is a reference to the famous confrontational threeway shootout scene in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", a 1966 spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone (who also directed the crime thriller Once Upon A Time In America). The location is another homage to this scene, as the Kill Bill Vol.2 scene also takes place in a graveyard.
These intertexual references serve as an homage to Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western genre. The soundtrack and location choice also hint towards the similarity of the three main characters in both films representing the good, the bad and the ugly.
In the1966 film, the character named Blondie is 'the good', Sentenza "Angel Eyes" is 'the bad' and the bandit Tuco is 'the ugly'.
In Kill Bill Vol.2 these three types of characters are refered to by the blonde Bride taking Blondie's place as 'the Good', Bill being 'the Bad' and Bud serving as 'the Ugly'.
In the original 1966 film, Blondie 'the Good' ends up killing 'the Bad' and leaving 'the Ugly' in a very awkward situation.
The purpose of this reference also foreshadows the final ending of the Kill Bill story.
It gives the Bride iconic status and foreshadows that she, like Blondie, is going to win over the Bad and the Ugly, like Blondie does in the1966 western.
"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is also referred to in the opening scene of Kill Bill Vol.1, when the Bride "the Good" is lying on the floor when Bill "the Bad" shooting her, similar to the western scene in which Blondie "the Good" is lying on the floor near to death from dehydration when Tuco "the Ugly" points a gun at him.
Once Upon a Time in America is a 1984 crime thriller, directed by Sergio Leone.
After the title sequence, the film starts off with a sound bridge of the non-diegetic track “God Bless America” playing over the first close up shot. This is an important cultural signifier and the Italian director is making an ironic statement by using this track in the first shot also because the values represented in the song are so violently contradicted later in the film.
Eve, the first person the audience can see, appears out of the dark after diegetic sound of her footsteps and a door opening. She is obviously a femme fatale, a deviant woman. The first shot of her uses very little light, but she is still distinctively recognisable through the noir lighting.
Her emotions shown through her facial expression are emphasised by the use of many close up shots. Also, the viewer can identify with her so they are on her side, and also see this scene from her point of view.
This adds to the suspense of the scene, as the close ups and darkness mean that the audience can not see what is happening out side of the shots and so they cannot see the rest of the room. For all we know, a killer might be hiding in a corner.
Her beauty is shown even more distinctively when she turns on the ambient lighting of the lamp.
Her costume also connote a lot about her character. Her natural beauty is emphasised through the quite simple tone of colouring of her clothes and through her not wearing much make up. Her perfectionism is shown through the overall perfect impression and while her red nails foreshadow violence and blood, her pearl earrings and necklace connote her melancholy and stand for tears to show that, like for example Marion Crane in Psycho, she is a vulnerable character, but also simply to add sophistication and elegance to her style
The natural warmth of her character is also mirrored in the use of ambient, gold-toned lighting coming from the lamp covered by a beautiful lampshade. This lamp is the only source of lighting in the mise-en-scene.
The fact that she is introduced alone shows her as a isolated figure and character.
In this shot, Eve finds a silhouette of a body drawn onto the sheets of her bed, adding suspense by throwing the audience into a unexplained situation as one immediately questions what has happened.
This low angle shot is used to demonstrate her vulnerability, but also to show the audience an overview of the scene while still slightly keeping it similar to her perspective.
Suddenly, three gangsters enter, wearing generic 1940s trilby hats and jackets.Cut to low medium close up shot of Eve from behind, so the audience can see the scene how she is seeing it. One should particularly notice the notion of framing that is added in this shot with the arch in the ceiling/wall surrounding the action.A generic convention is the strong sense of claustrophobia adding to the tension making the viewers start to panic when they realise that Eve can't escape between the bed and the gangsters with the gun. Eve keeps her elegance even when she is shot by the gangsters as she gracefully twirls when she falls onto the bed.
Cut to low angle shot with Eve lying dead on the bed in the foreground out of focus, while the focus is on the three men standing authoritatively and dominantly in the background,
connoting their power. Despite being out of focus, Eve's shocked facial expression is still clearly recognisable, as her face is situated right close up to the camera.
When the gangsters leave the room after killing Eve, one of them turns the lamp off that Eve had previously turned on. This reflects how they have put her beautiful light out by killing her.
In a scene following the murder of Eve, the gangsters are brutally assaulting a fat middle aged man who is hanging by ropes from the ceiling. In this scene the director uses various close-up shots, applying the technique of shot reverse-shot and also importantly never breaking the 180-degree rule.
A low angle medium close up slightly tilted shot introduces the important gangster leader, who is calmly watching the assault, whilst sitting wearing a suit and suavely holding a cigarette in his hand.
This is a very interesting tilted upside down worm's eye view shot from later in the film. As well as being worm's eye view it is also a point of view shot seen from the perspective of a bleeding man lying shot on the floor looking up to the gangster.
In important generic convention from the entire film is that, even though there is a lot of violence and blood, nothing supernatural happens. This makes the film a crime thriller rather than an action or horror film.
The film opens to a black screen, with a sound bridge of heavy breathing and footsteps rhythmically walking across a room on wooden floorboards.
Cut to a high angle close up shot of a beaten up woman's face. She is lying on the floor after most probably having been involved in a violent fight or attack.
The purpose of a a close up in this shot is to add emphasis on the bride's terrified facial expression, bringing the audience straight into the situation and making them sympathise with her emotions. The high angle camera shot looking down to her shows her in a vulnerable position making the audience instantly have pity for her and see her as the 'goodie'.
Quentin Tarantino decided to show this scene in black and white as a tribute to the old 1950s film noir of which he is a big fan. It also adds a sense of authenticity to the scene, also indicating that it is possibly a flashback.
The high contrast black and white colouring turns the red blood on the bride's face into black blood, foreshadowing the darkness and hate, bitterness of the bride's character in this film.
This is also backed up later on in the film when she says “It's mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack!” as a reply to Bill thinking she is irrational.
An important thriller convention is the use of many shadows in the lighting.
Opening the film with such a dramatic unexplained situation adds suspense and tension to the audience, who are immediately taken and sucked into the film, questioning what has happened to bring the bride into her dramatic situation.
Diegetic sound of her hyperventilating mirrors the tension in her panicking look.
She feels threatened.
The suspense and sensation of threat is augmented while the sound of the footsteps become increasingly loud as they are walking towards the bride.
Cut to slightly low angle tracking shot of the feet in black cowboy-style shoes.
Diegetic sound of the cracking floorboards and strong sound of heavy footsteps connoting the importance and strong character of the enigmatic figure.
Cut back to high angle close up of woman.
Cutting from the tracking low angle shot of feet to high angle close up of woman shows the difference in power between the bride and the anonymous figure.
The terror in the bride's eyes grow as they fixate the feet walking towards her.
The enigmatic figure's hand enters the frame as he wipes the blood off to reveal the bride's beautiful face, but he cannot wipe away the deep hate mixed with terror in her look as tears dramatically flow from her eyes.
The tension in the scene is strongly intensified when the name 'Bill', embroidered in the corner of the handkerchief the enigmatic character uses to wipe her face, becomes recognisable. This immediately reveals the importance of his character, validating the audience's initial suspicion that he is a villain, as this name is obviously a reference to the the title 'Kill Bill'.
Based on the wrinkles on his hand and the deepness, roughness of his voice, one would imagine Bill is around 50- 60 years old.
Bill talks to the bride quite patronisingly, calling her 'kiddo' with a tone like a father would talk to his child, teaching him the lessons of life. This makes it clear to the audience that the two characters are not strangers and their relationship has a history.
Surprise is added to the scene when, while Bill continues talking in a casual manner, diegetic sound is to be heard of him taking a gun out of his jacket and preparing to shoot. The terror in the bride's face drastically grows while she sees the gun and quickly slips the word “Bill, it's your baby” in before he shoot the gun and her blood is splattered all over the floorboards.
Immediately cutting to a black screen with white writing “The 4th film by QUENTIN TARANTINO”.
Analysing this opening one and a half minutes of this film, a clear situation is already established.
Bill seems a patronising , ruthless character.
The big silver/gold bracelet he is wearing around his wrist and the silk handkerchief suggest he is quite pretentious, caring a lot about appearance and money, and manipulative, wanting to be in charge/ have the power all the time, which is also shown through the fact that he has impregnated a beautiful bride who is much younger than him, therefore expected to be obedient.
Bill is an enigma which is kept up throughout the whole film as Tarantino does not show the audience Bill's face.
Pearl earrings
Blue Jeans
Grey Converse trainers
Grey Jumper
We would like Rihannon Haileys to wear casual clothing. She is a teenager and is walking along on the beach on a windy day, so the clothes she is wearing have to keep her warm, but she must still feel comfortable and able to move around easily. She is wearing a pair of jean and a grey hoodie jumper. The jumper has BOSTON written on it in red. In thrillers, the colour red being used in a costume foreshadows violence and blood. For example, the femme fatale's red nails in the opening of Once Upon A Time In America. Rihannon is by herself and she hasn't bothered to make herself look particularly nice, however she is wearing pearl earrings, which add a touch of sophistication and glamour to her costume. Pearls also connote misery and each represent individual tears. In thrillers, pearls are a subtle genre convention showing that she is a femme fatale.
Over the past few weeks, we have had to adapt to our situation and change the plot of our thriller.
We filmed a lot in the dark, which was supposed to add mystery and thrill to our scene, but only to find that one was unable to properly see the mise-en-scene in the darkness. So we have now cut the idea of the flashback out of our thriller and have decided to keep only the scenes on the beach and add another scene, in which the enigmatic stalker is sitting at a computer sending our girl, Rihannon Haileys, an e-mail with pictures of her at the beach.
I will post the changed/final shotlist and the new storyboard on this blog later this week.
There are many features that characterise the thriller genre.
Here is a list with an explanation of various thriller conventions within a thriller mise-en-scene:
Lighting: Noir lighting (black on white) / ambient/ chiaroscuro lighting.
Most dangerous scenes take place at night because the bewildered nighttime and dark areas increase the feeling of danger and suspense (i.e. in Thelma and Louise and Jackie Brown).
Sometimes though (Heavenly Creatures/Essex Boys) murder or violent scenes happen in broad daylight instead. This adds surprise to the violence and could sometimes even add more thrill and horror, because it is so unsuspected. (People usually feel safer in daylight, so a murder at that time could be more shocking. For example, When one of the gangsters in Jackie Brown unexpectedly shoots the blonde girl in the middle of the car park in broad daylight with such a casual attitude can have quite a shocking effect on the audience.)
Camera angles: Long shots establish the environment the scene takes place in. Sometimes the director wants the audience to know, sometimes he doesn't. If he doesn't, the director uses more close-ups so the audience concentrates and possibly even identifies and empathises with one certain character.
Locations: Generic thriller locations are usually enclosed areas which add a sense of claustrophobia with no escape, no way out for the character in panic situations. Car parks are also very commonly used in thrillers (Thelma and Louise/Essex Boys). Other locations used in thriller films are plain, bewildered locations (gangster gets shot in boot of car in Jackie Brown) situated in the middle of nowhere.
In Essex Boys, for example, the beaten up character is helplessly left to rot in the mud in the middle of nowhere - Here, the terror is added because there is not much chance that anyone will come across him there to help him and so he will probably end up dying in a horrible condition.
Thriller locations are very unglamorous and surrounded by pale or dark colours .
Props
Weapons
Usually weapons are often used. Many main characters in a thriller own a gun or a knife. If they do not own a typical weapon, they tend to use items (whose purpose aren't originally to harm someone with) as weapons. For example glass vases, baseball bats, high heel shoes, stones etc.
White vans are often used in thrillers. They are very enigmatic, because anything could be hidden inside. Plain white -> faceless -> Enigma.
Characters
Thrillers mostly focus on illegal, dangerous or "wrong" behaviour, usually involving characters that are gangsters, part of the mafia, spies, detectives or any kind of murderers.
Sometimes, important key characters are complete enigmas, about whom the audience doesn't find out much information. Some of these enigmas get cleared up at the end of a film, but sometimes the character stays mysterious and one never finds out their actual identity.
Femme fatale
A femme fatale (french: fatal woman) is a strong, independent woman (maybe a gangsters wife, for example) who contradicts the sexist stereotype of a weak wife, good for nothing other than cleaning, cooking and taking care of children.
She looks beautiful like a stereotypical woman but acts strong like a stereotypical man . For example, a femme fatale would be wearing red lipstick, pearl earrings and a beautiful dress, under which she hides a gun or a knife.
Witness is a 1985 American thriller film starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis and directed by Peter Weir.
The scene starts with a slightly low angle medium close-up shot of the little Amish boy walking up to the religious statue in the railway station in amazement. The camera angles notifies the boy’s importance to the plot. He is wearing an Amish hat, which surrounds his head like an angel’s halo.
The boy is curious, especially admiring the statue, and this connotes that there is something of an artist about him.
Cut to shot panning up the statue from a low angle. This shows the importance of the classic Greek statue, which depicts a religious image of an angel helping a fallen man. This is possibly foreshadowing the turnout of the plot, assuming that the boy would take the role of the angel because of his halo hat.
Cut to the little boy looking up to and admiring the statue. The religious statue is something very new to the Amish boy, who hasn’t been exposed to this completely different culture before in his life.
Cut to a very high angle, over the statue’s shoulder shot of the little boy. The high angle shot shows the boy’s insignificance in this massive railway station (‘’we are all just little grains of sand’’)
The rule of thirds is used in this shot with the statue taking up one third of the left and the little boy in the massive railway station taking up two thirds on the right - the eye apparently goes to the right when watching a scene.
Cut to establishing long shot, very slightly low angle, of the Amish mother and the little boy sitting on a bench alone in the station
The child walks towards and into the vanishing point alone, without his mother. She lets him go alone because she doesn't realised the danger because there is no such danger in the Amish culture.
The boy walks into the toilets. Cut to low angle close up of a man, which suggests his significance.
Cut to establishing shot of the man in the railway station toilets washing his hands while the boy walks in and goes into a cubicle to pee. He does not lock the door so it is still a crack open.
The lighting in this scene is ambient lighting. The colour saturation around brown and beige. One important thriller convention is that the setting is a claustrophobic, unglamorous place. The sound is all diegetic and there is no added non-diegetic music, which makes the scene more realistic. The realism of the scene adds suspense.
2 other men come out of the toilet cubicles. One is dark-skinned and the other one is faced backwards to the camera, so the audience can not recognise his face and identity, which makes him an enigma.
The two men pull a bag over the first man, who was washing his hands when the boy came in.
They pull out a knife and murder him.
Non-diegetic sound of energetic classical music is added to the scene.
Cut to close up shot of boy’s face with his big brown innocent eyes wide open peeking through the crack in the cubicle door. Non-diegetic sound of the murder (stabbing and growling).
Cut to point of view shot of the murder from the boy's eyes from behind the crack of opened door.
The following shots are almost only close up head and shoulder shots of the characters. This adds emphasis to each character's emotion represented through their expressions.
The dark-skinned man hears a breath coming from the boy in the cubicle. He gets out his gun and starts violently opening all cubicle doors one after the other. They boy is in the cubicle at the very end.
Cut to close up shot of the boy’s hands trying to lock the cubicle door.
Cut to close up of dark-skinned man’s feet standing in front of the last cubicle door with the little boy behind them sliding through the crack under cubicle wall to the 2nd to last cubicle, which the man has already checked, to escape.
Cut to shot of the man violently opening last cubicle door, which was locked by the boy.
Cut to close up shot panning up boy from his feet to head. His feet are standing on toilet lid in the 2nd to last cubicle. His hands are holding him steady between the two cubicle walls. His position resembles the shape of the crucifix. The boy is holding his hat in his left hand and is no longer wearing it so he is not longer wearing the halo.
Close up of boy holding his breath in to hide from the violent man, emphasis on the terrified look on his face. Cut to man closing the last cubicle door.
An important thing to notice about the costume is how the man is wearing an all grey suit, mirroring the colour and smell of disgusting toilet sewage. He is also wearing a red tie, the colour of blood, which suggests he is involved in a murder or some kind of violence. In thrillers, the colour red is often used to foreshadow violence and blood, for example the femme fatale's red nails in the opening of Sergio Leone's “Once Upon A Time in America” foreshadowing the violence of her getting shot further on in the scene.
Cut to the iconic entrance of the detective policeman played by Harrison Ford. He is surrounded by light blue lighting, meaning he is good as opposed to grey/brown lighting surrounding the murderers in the toilets,
This film shows how in thrillers cities are seen as corrupt and dangerous places as opposed to the safety in for example, the Amish community. However, the use of the traditional Amish culture in a thriller is quite unusual.
Essex Boys in a crime-thriller, directed by Terry Windsor in 2000.
The film starts with credits appearing black on white on the screen. Straightaway, this sets the mysterious mood of the thriller. The title 'Essex Boys' appears, followed by a black screen.
There is a soundbridge of Billy, the main character, opening the door of a garage with a bang.
Within the first 43 seconds of the film, the director has already established the noir thriller genre with white-on-black chiaroscuro lighting (which is also used a lot in ‘Fight Club’ and ‘Matrix’). The lighting connotes firstly a sense of mystery in the mise-en-scene, as anything could be hidden in the dark overshadowed parts of the setting which the audience cannot see, but it also gives the audience a point of focus, to look at, similar to the vanishing point used in the railway station when the boy walks to the toilet alone in Peter Weir’s 1985 drama-thriller ‘Witness’. This suggests menace and possibly even foreshadows corruption later on in the plot. Another thriller convention in this particular mise-en-scene is the claustrophobic, enclosed space in the garage. The location is also very dirty and unglamorous place full of spider webs, which suggests the place is hidden or secret. All sorts of things happen behind garage doors in thrillers.
The diegetic sound adds realism to the mise-en-scene and the non-diegetic voice over of Billy talking (similar to the opening of ‘Animal Kingdom’) serves as a cultural reference to Essex due to Billy’s accent. The voice-over also provides the audience with extra information and suggests that maybe the scene describes is a flashback. The audience are watching the scene from Billy’s point of view. This makes the audience identify and sympathise with him: he is the ‘goodie’.
After opening the garage door, Billy sits down in a rusty old car and turns on the windscreen wipers
Introduction: Jason Locke
Billy tells the audience in the voice-over that the character Jason has just been released out of prison.
Cut to the car driving out of the garage building in daylight.
The weather is quite grey- this is a good example of how Windsor uses the pathetic fallacy, the weather foreshadowing the atmosphere of future events.
The landscape in the shot is unglamorous; the roads are surrounded by old, grey, grotty buildings.
Cut to a point of view shot of the car driving into a tunnel – a confined space- which adds to the thrill.
The car is driving into a beautiful vanishing point, which makes the tunnel resemble the barrel of a gun.
This is another metaphor foreshadowing the darkness of future events, much like the subliminal ‘STOP’ sign and letters on the road stating ‘STAY IN LINE’, both of which the car drives past before entering the tunnel.
Cut to Jason sitting relaxed (relieved even -> because he has just been freed from prison) in the backseat of the car.
Cut to a close up of Billy driving the car.
The deliberate reflection of the tunnel’s light bars on the windscreen over Billy much resemble prison bars or Billy being put in a cage. This is again, is foreshadowing darkness and violence/crime.
Billy is blinded by the reflection of the light. This suggests that the character is blind to what he is getting himself into, like the character Jay in Animal Kingdom.
Ambient lighting of light bars reflecting on windscreen. Non-diegetic music playing.
The car drives past a sign which says “WELCOME TO ESSEX”. This is another cultural signifier. Essex had a notorious reputation at the time in which the film takes place, being accused of giving Margaret Thatcher power.
Cut to the car stopping, which the audience is told in a voiceover to be for Jason to ‘visit an old friend’.
Cut to point of view shot, from Billy’s eyes sitting inside a white van, of Jason walking into a fishermen’s place, beating up a man and pouring acid into his face.
Cut to Billy and Jason driving off in a white van. The faceless, enigmatic white van is another brilliant genre convention as anything could be hidden inside a white van.
Diegetic sound of a man screaming in the back of the van, while a medium close up shows Jason’s vanity as he inspects his shirt and finds a stain of acid.
Cut to the car stopping. The location is part of Jason’s world, the Essex marshes; a place which he knows very well. It is a featureless, bleak place with no houses or walls as boundaries. This suggests that Jason has no moral boundaries, which his line “I’ll do anything except for bestiality” ironically contradicts.
Billy opens the van, the bleeding man runs out screaming, Jason kicks him to the ground, the man falls dace downwards. Cut to long shot of Billy and Jason driving out of the plain territory in the enigmatic white van, leaving the man to horrifically rot in the middle of nowhere, where no one will find him.
Looking at the way the director brilliantly establishes the noir thriller genre, an important theme in this film seems to be human moral corruption.
