Salvador Dali - Mike Wallace Interview - 1958

Hans Richter - Ghosts Before Breakfast

Dada, 1928

Thriller - Definition

Brief:
The opening two minutes of a fictional film, including titles

Definition:
The thriller is a fictional film genre - suspense and tension being key elements. Thriller films are movies that primarily use action and suspense to engage the audience. Thrillers emphasise nervous tension and anxiety. Thriller films are distinct from horror films, which emphasise fear, or action films, which emphasise exhilaration.
Typically, the hero of a thriller embodies the everyday citizen, often pitted against a larger force or organisation. Alfred Hitchcock, who is widely considered the master of this genre, utilises this very effectively with "the common man" as the protagonist. It builds tension with a minimum of pugilistic action, relying instead on mystery.

THIS IS ENGLAND: Notes on Thriller Openings

This Is England

• Montage of old footage – an eclectic mix of grainy clips – relevance to England establishes the setting and time frame
• Political scenes, violence, skinheads – the clips get progressively more violent, showing riots, brawls, wars – gives context and an idea of the themes of the film
• First shot establishes the date ‘July 1983 – Last day of term’ in a faded white font, matched by the peeling paint on the wall. The time (7:45) can also be seen on the clock so the audience are given a very clear idea of where the events are taking place. Thatcher speaking on the radio (again shows time and context) and the framed picture of a man in his military gear, his eyes shadowed by his hat, shows the boys values and pride in this photo
• The shot tracks backwards and pans to the left to reveal our protagonist, curled up in bed. As we get further out, hazy rays of sunlight can be seen, filtering through at the base of the window – this, the overall gritty look of the scene and the decrepit state of the boys room are reflected in his dazed awakening
• When he eventually gets from the bed, the head on mid shot of the bed does not change to accommodate his movements. Instead the focus is drawn in on his body, as this is now all that can be seen in the close up – shows his age, his lack of grooming
• His sighs, sniffs and breathing are exaggerated in the quiet bedroom. Background noise and a dog barking are heard more quietly from outside – gives a feel of isolation
• Several wide establishing shots of the boy walking – from his house, along to the shop – again, he is isolated and lonely in these large, photographic shots. The warm light and the muted colours are aesthetically pleasing
• More establishing of time period in the people he passes – two girls in typical eighties disco get up

PSYCHO: Notes on Thriller Openings

Psycho

• Vintage black and white ident, original score; dramatic strings
• Wavering, fuzzy picture
• Very simple and bold opening credits – black and white, plain text with no imagery and a simplistic font, quite nice graphically
• Establishing shots of a visually rich cityscape, shaking, slightly stop-start pans across the array of buildings – all of it very photographic, uniform, industrially beautiful. The shot zooms fairly rapidly, honing in on a specific building, the changes are cut faster – we fade closer into the building, moving to a close up of a specific window, cut closer still – the bottom of the window (left ajar) can now be seen, and details such as the straight lines of the blind and the rows of bricks
• We move into the blackness of the gap between window and sill, still with the shaky, stop-start filming (this may or may not be deliberate, I am unsure. However, it is effective)
• The location (Phoenix, Arizona), the date (Friday, December the eleventh), the time (two forty-three PM) are all established through separate titles, ascending in meticulousness with the nature of the shots – everything is very specific and therefore regarded by the audience as highly significant. The lack of digits in the date and time is unusual, drawing further attention to them
•  
• Much of the time, the man’s face is hidden (by the cut off point of the shot, by the girls head) or in shadow, he is a figure in the background or seen from behind but the mystery this creates around him actually draws the focus onto him rather than the women, simply through the audience’s curiosity to explore what they do not understand
• The soundtrack is now more gentle and mournful
• Of course, the title is a giveaway and as a viewer, one is eager to work out who the psycho is – at first assuming it is this man that we are originally introduced to but with the change in music, the tone of the dialogue, the languid camera work, the overall feel is a calming one and so the audience begin to question their original assumption, recomposing the air of mystery

THELMA & LOUISE: Notes on Thriller Openings

Thelma & Louise

• Wide establishing shot of a baron field extending into the distance by a dirt track and framed with mountains in the distance – the black and white, blue tinted shot fades to a more purplish tint as the shot pans right to focus on the mountains and the approaching road that leads far into the distance
• The shot slowly gains colour, staying on the mountains for a significant while – the audience are quite fixated on it, as the country-western original score continues to play – the colour is changing slowly, gaining saturation and darkness before fading to black
• The general aesthetic of the shots has a warm, grainy, antique feel
• Credits font is a sandy colour, has the look of an old western
• This fades back into a long tracking shot in the diner – there is nothing to distinguish Louise from the other waitresses, other than that the shot follows her about her work, throwing the other actors into the more blurry background – we are not even particularly aware of her dialogue, though it can be heard (over a non-diegetic country-western ballad and the general bustle of movement and conversation in the diner)
• The diner is rich visually and the action, though mundane, is quick. We get a sense of her hurry as she serves two girls, from the quick changes between shots – she doesn’t wait for a response to her brief ‘you girls are a bit young to be smoking – ruins your sex drive’, of depleted expression
• Louise is again shown in a close up, smoking as she makes a phone call in the back. Other waitresses in identical black-adorned white dresses move and converse behind her but the audience’s attention is drawn to Louise in the foreground and in the smoky, steamy kitchen, the extras draw very little focus
• As Louise gets frustrated on the phone to Thelma she bangs through into a quieter room – drawing attention to the newly heightened importance of their conversation. We follow her through the door from behind before cutting to show Thelma enter the new room and move into an extreme close up (towards the stationary camera)
• Thelma’s husband is shown with darker lighting or at the edge of the shot to highlight his irrelevance and aggression
• The scene of Thelma’s kitchen is also full of background noise – the TV, the clatter as she does the dishes (both cross-cutting scenes establish a sense of speed and activity but also a restlessness from both the starring women)

TAXI DRIVER: Openings To Thrillers

Taxi Driver

• ·     The painterly opening shots of the taxi pulling through the fame, engulfed in yellow smoke as it reflects the lights – pulls through on the climax of the brass backing music to the title in a motel-light style font

• ·     We follow the pain character into a room (tracking shot) still traces of the smoke to introduce him and with the same ominous and dramatic music
• ·      Low angel shots of the main character establish him as powerful, he appears shifty, amused and guarded – the shot pans in on him as he smiles to himself – draws attention to this and leaves the audience on a close up of his face
• ·      The shot of the man behind the desk from behind the main characters back pans upwards as it appears that he has caught him out and this shows the rise in his power

• 
  
• ·      Echoing shouts in the parking lot and all the yellow taxis in rows
• ·      He walks out onto the dingy street – again with the taxi’s lined up and the antique tint on the image

DRIVE: Notes On Thriller Openings

Drive
·      High angle establishing shot of skyscrapers sets the scene in New York City – fades to a low key, low
    angel shot; introducing the main character and seeing him shrouded in darkness immediately portrays
    him as a mysterious character
·      Contrapuntal pink calligraphic font similar to Barbie·      Over the shoulder shots show the profile of the main character in shadow – the rest of the image is out of
    focus so the audience’s attention is drawn to him. The whole shot is very dark
·      The music is suitably slow, heavy and intense - the audience feels trapped in the quiet of the car interior with the driver, as the car cruises through the almost black streets – only lit by the colourful array of lights on a montage of street shots – this shows the journey (eg. fades of several birds-eye-view shots, creating a criss-cross affect of the dark streets and the orange lights of cars moving slowing down them 

 this also overlapped with a side angle closeups of the man with his arm up on the steering wheel helps the audience put the two images together – of him driving and the car moving)
·      Following the man down the corridor, the shot cuts off at the base of his neck and so we are only shown his back in the slightly out of place scorpion jacket. We also catch a glimpse of Carey Mulligan’s character, passing through the hall, made to seem insignificant at first but foreshadowing alter events
·      The man wanders through the dark apartment, keeping the scene still without light
 

Visual/Aesthetic Research: Nicolas Provost - Papillon D'Amour

Sound Research: Sit still and do nothing and listen to these three pieces in a row