Thriller Opening One

Introduction of Research

In order to make a film we have to plan and research therefore my group decided to analyse the beginning of thrillers to see what we should include so we set the task of all four of us finding three films and evaluating them. these are the films we decided upon:

Victoria Louise - black swan, shutter island, and the shining.

Loua - panic room, the hand that rocks the cradle, and le cerde rouge

Connor - the prestige, fight club, and no country for old men.

scott -12 monkeys, se7en, and momento.

then we would change it into our own words and post it on our blogs.

Black Swan!

In general the camera angles at the beginning of black swan consist mainly of long shots and mid close ups. For example at the very beginning there is a diegesis of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) dream of dancing the white swan, therefore the director wanted to show the whole of the body to get all of the dance moves on screen. In addition, after the diegesis the mid close up of Nina connotes that she is the Female protagonist. It also included quite a few ped downs as the camera aims at showing the ballerinas foot work and injuries.

Throughout most of the sound in the beginning there was classical non diegetic music edited onto the background; this connotes the love of ballet as the music for it is always inside the characters heads. This also links to the mental decline Nina will face in the future as all she can think about is ballet. The diegetic sounds included a bit of dialogue as the character Nina talks to herself which reinforces her mental state possibly declining in the near future. Also the clicking of her joints in her toes shows her passion for the dance and makes the audience cringe as she still continues to dance despite the pain.

For the titles there was a mixture of big and small thin sharp and white on black font, White connotes purity and the thinness is like the swan’s neck black connotes death and so the juxtaposition of this makes it stand out. The place is firstly indented over the screen randomly for the credits and then the title is in the centre.

Editing included the clicking of her joints in her toes was probably overlapped to make it louder to hear and understand how much pressure and strain she is putting on her body so that she can do ballet. The diegesis flowed beautifully in time with the music at good paces as when the music got faster so did the dance moves.

Mise-en-scene

The lighting during the dream/diegesis is very dim black surrounding a spot light on Nina connoting that it’s from her point of view reinforcing that she is the female protagonist. The fact that it was so dark in her dream connotes that she prefers to be alone on stage dancing and doesn’t want any competition which she finds further on in the film. When she wakes up the lighting is warm and bright which contrasts to the dream.

Costume included a white swan like dress in the diegesis which connotes virginity and purity which is juxtaposed later on the film as the audience finds that Nina isn’t as pure as the white swan. Pink Pointe slippers which are symbolic and indexical to ballet. 

The settings were on stage, in her bedroom and in her dance studio.