Alright, guys so from the last post I reveal my genre is a thriller. This would be a new area for me, but I am very excited to learn. Thriller has always been very interesting to me. The way the director can build suspense with certain shots, angles, lighting, and mise-en-scene is a fascinating concept.
Here I am going to go over some different types of thrillers and analyze the certain techniques that the directors chose to create their films
Shots/angles: The scene starts with an establishing shot showing the big house in the distance. After the scene is mainly composed of closeups of objects from around the decorated house. while these show we are following a woman who is bringing food up to the man in the house. The combination of all these has the purpose to inform the audience about the kind of person who lives in the house.
Miss-en-scene: The opening starts with the big dark red and green mansion being surrounded by fog and leaves. These details establish a mysterious and cold tone. Throughout the scenes, the audience is introduced to the big mansion's décor. Inside the mansion is full of numerous things from big patterned carpets to small human sculptures. The walls in the rooms are decorated with various unique patterns or/and colors. We are shown in closeups various kinda creepy sculptures, two red masks, posters around the room, and lots of lots of books. Specifically, the books and posters showed (in the closeups) are by Harlem Thrombey the owner of the house/the victim. All of these details tell the audience that he is a well-known person. After we take a closer look the living area looks very messy with cups and bowls all over the tables and couch. This tells us another clue of the plot of the there was a reunion or party of sorts beforehand giving us details of when the scene is happening about the storyline of the movie.
Sound: There is a classical music piece in the background throughout the whole scene. The song starts off very quiet and calm at the beginning while the camera is outside the house. As soon as we are inside, it starts to rapidly increment on tempo and intensity. This choice gives details that something is going on inside the house, something dramatic. Additionally, to the music, the character we follow throughout the house has a few lines that set up her role in the house. With her few lines, we can tell that she takes care of the owner of the house, given that she was bringing him food to his room. At the end, when it's revealed that Man is dead, she drops a few things from the tray and is more worried about them falling than the dead person in the room.
Editing: It appears to be minimal to no editing in this scene given that the shots seem to last very long. The only part that seems to have editing would be at the finish where it fades to black. This technique is usually used when it's the ending of something, so it means the performance ended and they will soon learn what the scene was about.
Shots/angles: The scene has a limited amount of different shots and angles. the scene starts with a closeup of the ballerina's shoes while performing. Later after a few seconds, it introduces the character but then quickly cuts to a camera in the dark, introducing a new person coming on the stage. As soon as the two start dancing together the camera movements start getting more aggressive while it's panning around the subjects. the whole scene feels like it was all filmed in one take. This was probably done for the audience to feel as they were actually watching her on the stage
Miss-en-scene: The scene has a very simple mise-en-scene given it takes place on a stage. The scenery is made up of a pitch-black surrounding with the main light in the middle which follows the main character. The light contrasting with the darkness makes the girl stand out, hence that she is the main point of attention now and throughout the story. The main character and the other character also seen in the scene are dressed in traditional white swan ballet customs, which tells us that this film will revolve around a ballerina in the black swan show.
Sound: We only hear some sounds in the scene. A song of the soundtrack of the black swan. The song is calm at the beginning and end but in the middle, it quickly builds up to a more dramatic and fast-paced song. During this part, we see a fight between the main character and another character who is performing the same show. Which helps develop the plot which is about the black swan performance. And the heavy breaths and ballet shoes of the woman. This shows that she has been working hard to get to this point.
Editing: The scene is in black and white, which could mean many things. The scene is a memory the character is remembering, or it is to add mystery to the scene because we can't tell the color of things. Technically, none of them are correct given that I search google for the answer, and apparently the directors made this decision to conceal the blood from the girl. According to IMB trivia "Black and white (as well as black and red) was used to conceal the shedding of blood from television censors. Originally, no black-and-white photographic effects were going to be used (and in the Japanese version, none are), but the MPAA demanded measures be taken to tone the scene down"
(Tbh I find this very interesting how back then they had to censor bloody scenes but nowadays nothing is censored.)
Shots/angles: Also like the edition the variation of shots is very minimal. We start the scene with a tight closeup of the (what we could assume to be)the main character and then jump to another closeup to a man walking to her, where we can only see his feet. Then it jumps back to the girl in the same place. The way this was shot was to build mystery given that, we start mid-action, and also we never get to see the man's face. The audience never gets to see him through the main character does. The only thing we see is what he did to the girl.
Miss-en-scene: The background of the scene is very small because it is composed of tight closeups, but it can tell us some things about what led to the situation. Behind the girl, we can see what looks to be some fabric and splashes of blood. This scenery tells us that a fight happened between the girl and the guy. We see the girl with a bloody face and laying down on the floor, though we don't see the mand we could assume that she lost the fight. Nevertheless, this was contradicted by the end where we see the man either getting killed or killing himself. We aren't sure what happened because we are always seeing the girl, but we could assume he died because of the blood that suddenly splashed next to her after the gunshot.
Sound: The scene relies heavily on the sound given is the only thing that fully communicates details about the plot of the film. The first sound we hear is the heavy breathing of the girl (which are signs that she is weak/given up) and the footsteps of someone getting closer and closer to the girl, creating a sound perspective. The man and the woman have a conversation throughout this scene, though we can't see his face and he is the one who says the most lines, adding to the mystery/suspense side of the film. During this conversation, we hear a gun unlocked, and as soon as the woman ends her sentences, the guy shoots his brains out, which is an awful rude way to end a conversation. As we can see the sound's main priority is to create mystery around the guy. We don't know him so who is he? Why is he talking to her? Why did he die? many more questions are created from this opening which means it did its job, to introduce the conflict of the movie
<33
No comments:
Post a Comment