In film techniques are used to allow the audience to understand what genre they are watching. These techniques include mise en scene, camerawork, editing and sound. I will analyse the sequence of the thriller opening, "The Usual Suspects" to explain how these techniques construct the visual style of a thriller.
Mise en scene
The first scene of the opening starts with the stroke of a match, which immediately grabs the audience's attention. This then carries on to a shot of the prop oil canisters that are leaking, from the two shots being connected together the audience is able to start to put the scene together even with such a small amount of information to know that something bad will occur. Both of these items are iconography to show the thriller genre as they create suspense of what will happen next to the character.
Throughout the opening low key lighting sets the dark, mysterious and tense mood of the sequence. Though when the first character drops the matches into the line of petrol and the camera tracks the flame round it gives the audience more information, that leads to further questions to be asked. This being that in the surrounding that was lit up a dead man is revealed. As the audience it provokes these further questions of what happened, how did this man die, did this character kill him? By having these questions unanswered it builds suspense in desiring to know just what has happened.
Also the costuming that the second character matches the dark mysterious lighting as he is only wearing black clothing, so he blends into the surrounding almost becoming invisible. Also due to camerawork their is restricted narration to the character due to being unable to see his face. His clothing and lighting add to this mystery as we can make no judgment about this man except that he could be the antagonist due to how smartly he is dress compared to the other character.
Camerawork
Within then sequence restricted narration is use strongly and subdued, the first time we are introduced to restricted narration is our meeting of our second character in the opening, as mentioned before. The second time is more subdued as at the end of the opening we see an eye looking throw the rope. This enigma makes us wounder who this person is and what part they have with this story.
After the tracking of the flame building suspense slowly to what the audience will think is the explosion but is stopped by the antagonist when urinating on it.To reveal this new character the camera uses a low angle to tilt up to show the figure in his act. This use show us he status and authority as we are not shown his identity building tension for what thrillers aim for.
Editing
To keep continuity cuts are used in the opening of the film so that it all moves in one continuations flow and not distracting as fading could loss the time frame being continued and the audience thinking a new scene had appeared. Though by using cuts more frequently near the end of the sequence tension is build due to more action happening so to act like a heart beating fast feeling from the fast cuts. Fast cuts are frequently used in thrillers to increase the audiences heart rate for what is about to happen next or be connected to the action happening.
When the antagonist is leaving after killing the other character, he drops a cigarette to re-ignite the petrol. In this shot it had been edited into slow motion this emphasis it falling and the result being the petrol re-ignited to put the audience back to the beginning in knowing what is going to happen next.
Sound
The non-diagetic music track being used only starts when we are introduced to the antagonist. The music track also acted along with the sequence when the antagonist load his gun the volume increase and so does the tempo to build the tension as to build us up to the event of the shot. Also when the cigarette is dropped the volume and tempo increase this is often used in thrillers as by increasing the volume and tempo it creates tension as we know something is going to happen but we may not see the final result such as this case where it fades to black after the explosion.
For diagetic sound there is dialogue between the antagonist and the protagonist. From the dialogue we can see a small connection between the two characters and from the tone of their voices we can sense that the protagonist is not happy to see the antagonist. This makes the audience question whats there relationship to each other.
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