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.
