Samuel

The Usual Suspects

The: mise en scene, camerawork, editing, and sound all help ensure that the ‘Usual Suspects’ opening is filled with thriller conventions.The mise en scene helps to create a typical thriller feel, the antagonist is wearing a long black coat and his body expressions are that of someone very calm, despite him being in a very tense situation, this is shown when the injured character attempts to blow the boat up he calmly stands above the trail of fire and urinates on it showing the audience how calm he is in a life or death situation proving to them that he is very calm and powerful. The character in the opening of the film that we see sitting down is portrayed to be very weak, vulnerable, and desperate as his facial and body expressions are that of a very weak and injured man, he is shown to be desperate because in the first few seconds that we see him, he attempts to set a trail of petrol a light to blow himself, the antagonist, and the boat up showing the audience that he is not strong enough to fight the antagonist, and so his last line of defence is to blow himself and the boat up. As well as this he is sitting down and doesn’t appear to be attempting to try to move from the danger coming towards him showing the viewer that he is not strong enough to resist/ fight the danger coming his way. All of this builds up lots of tension and this tension really keeps the viewers on the edge of their seats, which is a typical convention of a thriller film.

As well as this the Camerawork never reveals the face of the antagonist, it only shows the bottom half of him, this helps to create an enigma around who the antagonist is? And what he looks like? This enigma is a typical convention of a thriller film and as well as creating mystery it builds tension as the viewer is left questioning and tense because of what they do not know. The camerawork also builds tensions as it tracks the flames as they move towards the leaking barrels, the viewer is expecting a huge explosion until the flames are abruptly stopped by the films antagonist. Once again leaving the viewer questioning who the antagonist? Is and what he looks like? But the camera still never pans high enough to see his face continuing the enigma.

The editing helps to create a lot of tension which again is trademark of a thriller film, it does this by having lots of fast cuts and by cutting away at key points leaving the rest to the viewer’s imagination. One example of this cutting during a tense scene is when the antagonist is just about to pull the trigger to kill the injured man, the editing cuts away to a shot of the boat and all the viewer is left with is the sound of two gun shots, the rest they have to fill in with their imaginations which tend to always be worse than the real thing, this once again helps to create both tension and mystery which are both key conventions of a thriller.

The sound throughout the opening helps to build tension as the whole way through it there is slow but tense sounding music that crescendo’s when the boat blows up which helps to reinforce tension throughout the opening. As well as this the sounds of things like the petrol coming out of the barrel are emphasised to build tension, also the gun shots are made louder so that they cut through the momentary silence and have more impact upon the viewer once again building  up huge amounts of tension.