Opening scenes - psychological thriller research
My Genre
The genre I settled upon for my film was the psychological thriller. As part of this decision I analysed the tropes of psychological thrillers, as well as looking at the openings of five psychological thrillers.
Narrative
The psychological thriller genre is a subset of thrillers that revels not just in the thrill of the chase, but in some kind of mind-game. These films are often detective stories or stories about serial killers, and are known for their common use of narrative twist endings. Another common trope is the idea that the characters, and by extension the audience, may not be sure what is going on, whether due to elaborate mind games being played by other characters, or more literally in the form of depictions of mental illness or the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy.
One of the most famous examples of this is The Sixth Sense, which spends a large portion of the film with the audience believing that a young boy is mentally disturbed, only to discover that he is actually seeing ghosts. The film infamously had a twist ending that made it one of the most profitable films of its decade.
Another famous example is The Silence of the Lambs, which follows protagonist Clarice Starling as she attempts to persuade an imprisoned psychopath to help her track down a killer at large. The investigation takes us through multiple twists and turns as the two main characters manipulate one another in order to get what they want, and Clarice is never quite sure what exactly Hannibal wants from her.
Character types
Characters in psychological thrillers are often detectives of some kind. Sometimes a fresh-faced young detective on their first case, sometimes a grizzled older detective well versed in the horrors of modern life, and often times a combination of the two. Even when the protagonist is not a police detective, they are usually going on a journey of discovery trying to find something out, as this narrative device helps propel them through the story and the twists and turns.
The aforementioned Clarice Starling became the archetype of the female hero in a psychological thriller. She was surrounded by men who did not respect her or used her femininity as a fulcrum to get what they wanted, but her intelligence, drive and vulnerability were her weapons.
In the film Seven, our two main characters are detectives being toyed with by a deranged killer. One is an impulsive hot-head looking to prove himself in a new town, the other a weathered, wizened detective only days away from retiring, looking simply to get out of this life before it kills him.
But not all protagonists in psychological thrillers are driving the narrative through investigation. It Misery, Paul Sheldon finds himself held hostage by an insane fan, desperate for him to write a new book for her. He must use his intelligence to engage in a battle of minds with Annie in order to free himself. This kind of protagonist is also a staple of the genre.
Camerawork
As psychological thrillers are all about delving into the minds of our characters, and one way that this is achieved is through the use of intense close-ups. This was made most famous in The Silence of the Lambs, where the filmmakers shot performers as though they were speaking straight to the camera, making full eye contact. This created a sense of uncomfortable intimacy that made scenes extremely tense.
Another technique in psychological thrillers is to have the camera moving constantly, slowly creeping around the rooms through the use of steady cams or tracking shots. This slow, creeping movement creates a hypnotic feeling in the audience, and gives the feeling that we are intruding on something we shouldn't be seeing. It is also regularly used to pan towards a shocking reveal; something hidden in the corner that could not be seen until now.
Mis-en-scene
Set decoration and costuming in psychological thrillers are almost always built to accentuate grittiness and dirt. The environments tend to be filthy, or at least stark, and this gives a sense that the grim trappings of these worlds may seep into the audience. Lighting tends to be dark and moody, accentuating shadows and wrinkles, and colour grading can also be de-saturated.
Editing
A key component of a successful psychological thriller is tension, and that tension is created though long, slow takes. Rapid cutting is almost never used in a psychological thriller, as this pace kills the mood of creeping dread.
Sound
Psychological thrillers employ sound to great effect, with both non-diegetic score and diegetic sounds used to create a sense of unease. Iconographic diegetic sound effects like the camera flash in the opening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre litter the psychological horror cinemascape, and they are also known to use non-diegetic sounds that humans are naturally afraid of, such as swarming bees or even infrasound (the sound-waves theorised to cause ghostly hallucinations) in soundtracks in order to create a sense of dread.
Five opening scenes
Seven
The film Seven opens with a montage of disconcerting imagery designed to give us flashes into the mind of a serial killer. We are shown brief images of the killer planning his crimes, cutting off his fingertips etc., but none of these images are given time to take hold, they instead act as a tone poem for what we will be watching.
Both the writing in the books on screen and the font used for the name in the credits are emulating scratchy handwriting, and the soundtrack uses industrial sounds and atonal composition to create a thumping sense of dread.
Shutter Island
Shutter Island opens first with a wide shot of a boat coming in through the fog, establishing a sense of emptiness and loneliness. Isolation will play a key role in the film's narrative and themes, and that is quickly established here.
Next the film introduces the main character looking haggered and sick in an extreme close up. He stares at himself int he mirror and tries to talk himself into keeping it together. The camerawork in this scene is claustrophobic, juxtaposing the wide emptiness of the sea with the confines of his quarters. Immediately we get the sense that the character is tense and stressed, another hallmark of the psychological thriller.
Gone Girl
Gone Girl opens with a slow, deliberate pace. Logos slowly fade onto the screen, and the soundtrack is light and airy, but uses augmented chords (chords designed to feel stretched out and unresolved) to create a sense of space. Before we see anything from the film itself, we're already given a sense of emptiness.
The voiceover begins, describing violent imagery but in a very soft tone, and a close up of Amy staring right into the camera just as we saw in The Silence of the Lambs. The next shot after introducing these two characters is a massive open space by the water, establishing the city. There's nobody around, emphasising again that emptiness. The sparse, empty spaces that establish the setting might be called beautiful, but the desaturated colour grading and tense music make it instead seem lonely, even as we're looking at the enormous houses that the wealthy characters live in.
Something
Like Seven, Memento opens with strange, violent imagery as the first thing we see, but unlike Seven the editing is much slower. The scene takes its time fading in and the tempo of the music is very low.
The scene is shown in reverse, but that only becomes clear when the image in the photograph begins to fade. This is a disorienting effect, and forces the audience to ask questions about what is going on, but it also establishes the themes of forgetting which play a key role in the film.
The scene ends with the photo being placed back into the camera, and the violent murder of another character played in reverse, establishing out hero but also crystalising the questions we had earlier into more concrete ones. Why is he doing this?
The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense opens by establishing our main characters in an ordinary setting; their home, but quickly the mood changes when the window is discovered shattered. The lighting in the scene is dark, accentuating shadows, and the smashed glass by the window in the shape of sharp jagged shapes puts the idea of violence into our minds.
When it is revealed that the naked man is in his bathroom, he seems deranged, but when he reveals he is an ex-patient of our protagonist's, the confusion of his presence is replaced with mystery. Who is he and what does he want?
The tension in the scene reaches its climax when the stranger shoots our protagonist, and the violence promised by the broken window unfolds. Just as with the other scenes, the editing is slow and deliberate, but unlike the other openings, here the camera is handheld, giving tense energy to the scene as the camera jerks around uncontrollably.
Conclusion
The most important aspect to the narrative of a psychological thriller is an enigma, and the most important aspect to the style of a psychological thriller is a sense of dread.
A narrative enigma is created by establishing an ordinary situation and then placing something into that situation that causes a cognitive dissonance; something is strange about the situation, and we follow our characters as they try to find out what.
Dread on the other hand is created largely through the stylistics of film. There are many ways to create this dread, but I have found that most often it is created with the use of augmented or dissonant music, slow camera movements, close-ups, dark lighting, de-saturated colour grading and a languid editing pace.
The genre I settled upon for my film was the psychological thriller. As part of this decision I analysed the tropes of psychological thrillers, as well as looking at the openings of five psychological thrillers.
Narrative
The psychological thriller genre is a subset of thrillers that revels not just in the thrill of the chase, but in some kind of mind-game. These films are often detective stories or stories about serial killers, and are known for their common use of narrative twist endings. Another common trope is the idea that the characters, and by extension the audience, may not be sure what is going on, whether due to elaborate mind games being played by other characters, or more literally in the form of depictions of mental illness or the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy.
One of the most famous examples of this is The Sixth Sense, which spends a large portion of the film with the audience believing that a young boy is mentally disturbed, only to discover that he is actually seeing ghosts. The film infamously had a twist ending that made it one of the most profitable films of its decade.
Another famous example is The Silence of the Lambs, which follows protagonist Clarice Starling as she attempts to persuade an imprisoned psychopath to help her track down a killer at large. The investigation takes us through multiple twists and turns as the two main characters manipulate one another in order to get what they want, and Clarice is never quite sure what exactly Hannibal wants from her.
Character types
Characters in psychological thrillers are often detectives of some kind. Sometimes a fresh-faced young detective on their first case, sometimes a grizzled older detective well versed in the horrors of modern life, and often times a combination of the two. Even when the protagonist is not a police detective, they are usually going on a journey of discovery trying to find something out, as this narrative device helps propel them through the story and the twists and turns.
The aforementioned Clarice Starling became the archetype of the female hero in a psychological thriller. She was surrounded by men who did not respect her or used her femininity as a fulcrum to get what they wanted, but her intelligence, drive and vulnerability were her weapons.
In the film Seven, our two main characters are detectives being toyed with by a deranged killer. One is an impulsive hot-head looking to prove himself in a new town, the other a weathered, wizened detective only days away from retiring, looking simply to get out of this life before it kills him.
But not all protagonists in psychological thrillers are driving the narrative through investigation. It Misery, Paul Sheldon finds himself held hostage by an insane fan, desperate for him to write a new book for her. He must use his intelligence to engage in a battle of minds with Annie in order to free himself. This kind of protagonist is also a staple of the genre.
Camerawork
As psychological thrillers are all about delving into the minds of our characters, and one way that this is achieved is through the use of intense close-ups. This was made most famous in The Silence of the Lambs, where the filmmakers shot performers as though they were speaking straight to the camera, making full eye contact. This created a sense of uncomfortable intimacy that made scenes extremely tense.
Another technique in psychological thrillers is to have the camera moving constantly, slowly creeping around the rooms through the use of steady cams or tracking shots. This slow, creeping movement creates a hypnotic feeling in the audience, and gives the feeling that we are intruding on something we shouldn't be seeing. It is also regularly used to pan towards a shocking reveal; something hidden in the corner that could not be seen until now.
Mis-en-scene
Set decoration and costuming in psychological thrillers are almost always built to accentuate grittiness and dirt. The environments tend to be filthy, or at least stark, and this gives a sense that the grim trappings of these worlds may seep into the audience. Lighting tends to be dark and moody, accentuating shadows and wrinkles, and colour grading can also be de-saturated.
Editing
A key component of a successful psychological thriller is tension, and that tension is created though long, slow takes. Rapid cutting is almost never used in a psychological thriller, as this pace kills the mood of creeping dread.
Sound
Psychological thrillers employ sound to great effect, with both non-diegetic score and diegetic sounds used to create a sense of unease. Iconographic diegetic sound effects like the camera flash in the opening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre litter the psychological horror cinemascape, and they are also known to use non-diegetic sounds that humans are naturally afraid of, such as swarming bees or even infrasound (the sound-waves theorised to cause ghostly hallucinations) in soundtracks in order to create a sense of dread.
Five opening scenes
Seven
Both the writing in the books on screen and the font used for the name in the credits are emulating scratchy handwriting, and the soundtrack uses industrial sounds and atonal composition to create a thumping sense of dread.
Shutter Island
Shutter Island opens first with a wide shot of a boat coming in through the fog, establishing a sense of emptiness and loneliness. Isolation will play a key role in the film's narrative and themes, and that is quickly established here.
Next the film introduces the main character looking haggered and sick in an extreme close up. He stares at himself int he mirror and tries to talk himself into keeping it together. The camerawork in this scene is claustrophobic, juxtaposing the wide emptiness of the sea with the confines of his quarters. Immediately we get the sense that the character is tense and stressed, another hallmark of the psychological thriller.
Gone Girl
Gone Girl opens with a slow, deliberate pace. Logos slowly fade onto the screen, and the soundtrack is light and airy, but uses augmented chords (chords designed to feel stretched out and unresolved) to create a sense of space. Before we see anything from the film itself, we're already given a sense of emptiness.
The voiceover begins, describing violent imagery but in a very soft tone, and a close up of Amy staring right into the camera just as we saw in The Silence of the Lambs. The next shot after introducing these two characters is a massive open space by the water, establishing the city. There's nobody around, emphasising again that emptiness. The sparse, empty spaces that establish the setting might be called beautiful, but the desaturated colour grading and tense music make it instead seem lonely, even as we're looking at the enormous houses that the wealthy characters live in.
Something
Like Seven, Memento opens with strange, violent imagery as the first thing we see, but unlike Seven the editing is much slower. The scene takes its time fading in and the tempo of the music is very low.
The scene is shown in reverse, but that only becomes clear when the image in the photograph begins to fade. This is a disorienting effect, and forces the audience to ask questions about what is going on, but it also establishes the themes of forgetting which play a key role in the film.
The scene ends with the photo being placed back into the camera, and the violent murder of another character played in reverse, establishing out hero but also crystalising the questions we had earlier into more concrete ones. Why is he doing this?
The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense opens by establishing our main characters in an ordinary setting; their home, but quickly the mood changes when the window is discovered shattered. The lighting in the scene is dark, accentuating shadows, and the smashed glass by the window in the shape of sharp jagged shapes puts the idea of violence into our minds.
When it is revealed that the naked man is in his bathroom, he seems deranged, but when he reveals he is an ex-patient of our protagonist's, the confusion of his presence is replaced with mystery. Who is he and what does he want?
The tension in the scene reaches its climax when the stranger shoots our protagonist, and the violence promised by the broken window unfolds. Just as with the other scenes, the editing is slow and deliberate, but unlike the other openings, here the camera is handheld, giving tense energy to the scene as the camera jerks around uncontrollably.
Conclusion
The most important aspect to the narrative of a psychological thriller is an enigma, and the most important aspect to the style of a psychological thriller is a sense of dread.
A narrative enigma is created by establishing an ordinary situation and then placing something into that situation that causes a cognitive dissonance; something is strange about the situation, and we follow our characters as they try to find out what.
Dread on the other hand is created largely through the stylistics of film. There are many ways to create this dread, but I have found that most often it is created with the use of augmented or dissonant music, slow camera movements, close-ups, dark lighting, de-saturated colour grading and a languid editing pace.
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