Genre Research

The genre my group is portraying in our opening sequence of a film is ‘Crime thriller’. Thriller is a genre that uses suspense tension and excitement as its main elements. The primary sub genres are crime (in which we are going to convey in our opening sequence), mystery and psychological. The biggest and possibly the most popular thriller movies are the Hitchcock movies.

The main themes that are in Crime thriller movies are mainly ransoms, captivities, revenge, heists and kidnappings and murder. Some crime thriller films that involve serial killing and murder are: Seven-1995 American film directed by David Fincher, A Perfect murder-1998 American film directed by Andrew Davis and silence of the lambs-1991 American film directed by Jonathon Demme. Whereas some crime thriller films that involve heists or robberies are: The Score-2001 directed by Frank Oz, The killing-1956 directed by Stanley Kubrick and Resevoir dogs-1992 American film directed and written by Quentin Tarantino.

The general mise en scene/iconography used in crime thriller involves dark gloomy locations. The lighting is generally dark and gloomy which is very conventional as it relates with the dark themes of the storyline. The majority of the characters in the thriller films are also dressed in dark clothing. However the contrast between one dark color and one brighter color in crime thriller films is a typical convention of many thrillers and the brighter color would usually be red-which represents blood. Again the makeup worn by the characters would also be very dark, however again it could use some red blood and maybe some contact lenses e.g. white contact/red contact lenses to create the whole horror/thriller feel to the audience.

The typical setting in a crime thriller film would again usually be a dark place to again convey to the audience the dark gloomy feel of all the themes that are being portrayed to them. Some typical settings are dark empty forests, dark alleyways and empty rooms. These are all used to convey the dark and scary feeling the darkness and the emptiness are used to create suspense building up inside the audience. One of my favorite settings used in thriller films is the setting in ‘Friday the 13^th’-1990 is the lake scene towards the end as it shows the dark misty lake and the sky almost changing to an orange color to represent the mood possibly changing.

In crime/thriller films characters are usually represented in similar ways. The director usually has a naive young female character, a ‘tough’ male character, the evil murderer and other characters to make up the group. E.g the characters that already know they are going to die in film therefore they take part in the drink taking and drug taking (e.g the group in scream). The director also usually uses a police man who either nearly finds out who the murderer is or the answer to the case, or sometimes he does find out, but then get kills before he can tell anyone.

The narrative of thriller/horror films usually starts with a murder or a killing or a character dying. We are then introduced to the main character who is usually the ‘final girl’. A series of killings usually then takes place and the audience are used clueless but are given small clues to keep them guessing who the murderer is. However in some films the audience knows straight away who the killer is they are just left guessing who is going to be killed next. In films such as ‘Halloween’ the identity of the murderer is known from the beginning through the opening sequence. The murders he then commits then get progressively gorier throughout the film. All attempts to stop him fail until ‘the final girl’ puts an end to it all.

Introduction

My name is Tai Ellis and I am in a group of three with Konstantin Ermakov and Corey Fielder. We are doing an opening sequence to a crime/thriller movie and throughout my blog I am going to show some of the individual research I completed throughout shooting the film and planning the film.

Target Audience

To help us determine our target audience please fill in the questionnaire below.

How old are you?

What is your favourite genre?

Do you prefer true story lines?

Why do you like/dislike crime thrillers?

What would encourage you to see a crime thriller?

How many crime thrillers do you normally watch per year?

'Snatch' and 'Silence of the lamb'

The genre my groups opening sequence is going to convey is 'crime thriller', therefore I have chose to analyse the two opening sequences of 'Snatch' directed by Guy Ritchie 2000, and 'The silence of the lambs' directed by Jonathon Demme in 1991.

The opening scene of 'Snatch' starts off with four men dressed in top hats, long black blazers, black trousers and beards. The male character in the middle of the bunch then pulls off a white sheet which reveals he is armed with guns, which is when the other three men grab the guns and start aiming them. The director then shows a close up of the owners scared face and then a long shot of a man pointing gun at the security person watching the tape and then getting elbowed in the face. The editor then uses hard cuts back to the four men holding and pointing there guns and beating all of the workers up.

Through the use of cinematography we then see a close up of one of the armed men and then a rotational transition. The director then uses a slide transition from one armed man to another armed man and then another rotational transition when one of the armed male characters is on top of the desk.

The director then uses another two rotational transitions from a medium close up of man on floor getting beaten up and then to one of the armed men taking items from the setting. The setting seems to be a kind of office/bank type of location.

The camera then zooms in to a close up of the gun which instantly engages the audience. Another rotating transition is showed of the armed man jumping down off of the table and pointing the gun of two males shaking, where the director then shows a close up of the two male characters shaking.

The location then changes and we see the four men in the back of a lorry taking off their costumes and beards etc. The director then uses a close up of one of the armed men holding a diamond to his eye and a rotating transition is then used and the shot cuts to what I believe is the four armed men's boss looking at the diamond through a magnifying glass.

'Silence of the lambs' opening scene differs completely to 'Snatch'. The scene starts off with an image of the countryside and the view. Creepy slow music is played including eagle noises and ambient sound. The director then uses an extreme long shot of a woman climbing up a rope to a close up of her tired face.

The director then uses a worms eye view of the woman running and instantly engages the audience as it creates suspense and make us ask the question 'why is she running?.' We then come to see a close up of the woman's face which show her looking worried, whilst the music is becoming more upbeat.

The woman then climbs over a rope climbing object and then the audience see another male character run over to the woman character and say '....wants to see you in his office' she then replies 'thankyou' and runs in the opposite direction. The director then shows a close up of the males face which shows worried expressions and then we see a mid close up of words on a tree such as..:'Hurt' 'Agony' 'Pain' 'Love it'.

Therefore, from both opening sequences I realised that even though they are both using the same genre throughout, they can use completely different ideas. 'Silence of the Lamb' opening sequence is more calm and throws a few hints at the audience that it is going to get scary e.g the creepy music and the tree with the words 'hurt,agony pain, love it' on. Whereas 'Snatch' instantly conveys to the audience this is a crime thriller film and there is going to be a lot of violence in it.