The Usual Suspects Opening Scene Recording

This is a recording where we are talking about the stereotypical conventions of the Usual Suspects thriller opening scene. I worked with Beth Funnell and Dan Stamp, you can hear all of our voices on this recording talking about different aspects.

Camera Angles

Shot Types

This is an extreme wide shot, the view is really far away from the subject that you cannot see the subject. This is mostly used to see the view or scenery. This shot is often used in an establishing shot at the beginning of a film or opening.

This is a wide shot, in which the subject takes up the frame and you can see the characters whole body.

This is a mid shot, in which you are shown the head and upper body of a character. This shot is appropriate when a character is speaking without too much emotion. This shot allows room for movement and hand gestures. Shows facial expressions and is filmed from the waist up.

This is a medium close up which is in-between a mid shot and a close up. This shot shows more of a character's face.

 This shot is a close up in which a certain feature takes up most of the frame. This shot is used for showing detail and emphasizes the emotional state of a character. Used to show facial expressions and invades personal space with a character and show's their feeling's. Don't cut under chin.

This shot is an extreme close up which shows extreme details and really emphasizes emotions, this is often used on a characters eyes. This shot is all about one character and gives the audience information about this one character.

This is a two-shot in which shows two characters and really emphasizes the relationship between both characters.

This is an over the shoulder shot which is framed behind the character who is looking at the other character. This is commonly used in conversations.

This is a point of view shot, which shows a view from one characters perspective.

This is a weather shot which shows the weather and is used to set the mood.

Looking at another students work...

When looking at this piece of work, I was looking for the genre conventions and the visual elements.

I could tell that this piece of work was a thriller film because of the:
- Fast cutting and Editing > this showed me that this was a thriller as many thriller's do this to build up the suspense and make the audience feel that something is going to happen
- Running > The character was running around and by his facial expressions, this also built up the suspense and it made me feel like there was something he was running from but it was a mystery (another element of a thriller)
- The gun > This showed me that this film was a thriller as this is a key prop used in many thriller films
- The music > The music was building up suspense and really sounding like music that would have been used in a real thriller film and I thought that it worked very well

Visual elements:
- Close up shot > Close up shots are very popular is thriller films and are probably the shot that is used the most as they tell us a lot about the character. These are the most common shot's used in a thriller.
- Black and White colouring > I feel that the use of this was very good and I feel that this also helped build up the suspense for me
- Tracking shot > This was used very well and built up the suspense and mystery a lot as it gave me a better insight into what was happening, that this man was being chased by someone, the audience may also feel like they are being the one's who are chasing this man too. However, we don't see till the end who is actually chasing him.
- Gun-man-gun-man > this created a lot of suspense and the audience would have really wanted to know what was happening
- Mystery > This is created as we don't know till the end what this man is running away from. I think this is done really well in this opening sequence and although we see the man being shot in the end so we know what has happened and it has given a bit away to the audience, the audience are left wondering and wanting to know why this has happened and want to know the past with this storyline, which is really good for a thriller.

Genre Conventions of a thriller film

This is my mind-map showing genre conventions of a thriller film and the audience's expectations. Beth and I worked on this task together.

When we was completing this task, we thought that the characters would be violent because in thriller films, most of the characters are violent. We thought that there would be crime and criminals such as murderers and stalkers because we often see these in thriller films. We thought that there is usually a hero and also victims and some innocent victims too.

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