Brick

• Conventions - suspense, tension, enigmas, flashback
• Camera - fade in , close up of face, close u[ of hand , flicking cigarette
• Editing - straight cut
• Sound - girls sound scared on phone, girl scared asking for help, pone box ringing, car horns as it drives passed, people talking 
• Mise-en-scene - dirty clothes and hair, bracelets , casual clothes , glasses.

Thriller openings

Memento

• This film has an extremely difficult narrative structure where events are told in 10 minutes segments but backwards.
• The echoes the confusion that the main character feels as he struggles to remember events.
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• Conventions  - cliffhanger, reverse, suspense, tension, enigma
• camera - close up of man, kegs, hanger, showing room, close up of photo
• sound - depressing, dialogue man confused, Lenny happy making jokes, man doesn't remember.
• mise-en-scene - photo with blood, colour of photo changes and vanishes. camera, window of car blocked , man has something written in his hand.

Cliff hangers

• Sometimes, although not always, used. Often feature a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation
• This can entice the audience to keep watching in order to see how the situation resolves itself.
• It’s not exactly, strictly speaking, a thriller, but the Italian job (1969) gives us a whity example of this in its famous ending.

Video from North by North West showing this scene

Red herrings

Red herrings

• A red herring is the name given to a device which intends to divert the audience from the truth or an item of significance.
• Can work with other devices (enigmas) to create suspense.
• In saw, two characters spend time imprisoned in a room in which a third character lies dead. Throughout the film, both characters appear to be guilty of a series of murders, until it is discovered at the end that the third person in the room is not actually dead but is, in fact the killer.
• North by North West (Hitchcock 1958)
• “Dusting crops where there aren't any crops”
• Main character, Thornhill, sent to meet a man (Kaplan) who will explain why he has been mistaken for a government agent and, we believe, help him.

Narrative – structure, formulas and devices.

Narrative – structure, formulas and devices.

Use of continuity editing

• The clear establishment of cause and effect, plotting which establishes character motivation and helps tell an interesting story which proceeds logically and steadily.
• Enigmas- this refers to a puzzle, something mysterious or inexplicable, or a riddle or difficult problem.
• In thrillers this is commonly something which the protagonist has to try to find out or solve before the narrative is resolved and the film finishes.

The psychological thriller

The psychological thriller

The mind, conflict and the past

• The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another’s minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the others mental state.
• Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own mind usually this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them.

Hitch cock's maguffin

A maguffin (sometimes maguffin or maguffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters and advances the story, but has little other relevance to the story.
"we have a name in the studio, and we call it the maguffin, it is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. in crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers."m

Notorious

Rope (1948)

• Tells the story of the two young , wealthy men, Brandon and Philip, who strangle and murder a friend of theirs just to see if they can get away with it.
• They then invite other close friends (including the murdered mans parents !) to their apartment for a dinner party, whilst hiding the body in a chest/box in their sitting room, just to see if they can get away with it.
• The suspense is created through the body in the chest box.
• What will happen?
• Will the body (and the two men) be discovered and brought to justice?
• Do we, the audience, even want this to happen?

suspense and shock

Imagine a scene in a film similar to this (classroom, student, teacher). the camera reveals that there is a bomb under the table to the audience but we the (audience, student and teacher ) are unaware of this.

• Will we be saved?
• Will the bomb go off?

This is suspense.

Now image the same scene except that instead of the camera revealing the bomb under the table it, with any warning explodes and kills all present !

• This is shock !

An example of this is children of men

AS Coursework Thriller

The brief
The titles and openings of a new fiction film in the thriller genre to last a maximum of two minutes. the coursework is 50% of the course.
mark schema
Marks are awarded for demonstrating excellence in the following criteria:

• holding a shot steady
• framing a shot
• using a variety of shot distances 
• shooting material appropriate to the task set

Before you begin filming you must go through the planning process.
you should then undertake some research into the genre and complete the research sheet.