What Other Media Products Have Inspired Me in Planning My Own Film

Boathouse - John Murphy (Last House on the Left)  

 

In "Characteristics of a Thriller Move" I talked about a piece of music from "28 Weeks Later" which is also by John Murphy. I wrote that John Murphy is the master of suspense and action music and I think that 'Boathouse' is one of his best pieces. Towards the beginning, like most of his music, it starts quiet and hushed giving us the 'quiet before the storm' effect. It reaches a crescendo to give a sense of action and suspense. John Murphy music in general is rather inspiration when making a thriller movie as it creates a good ambience for any suspense scene or scene of action. His use of bass creates a thumping-like feel to it, almost like the sound of war drums allowing the connection to action. He also uses violins which are also synonymous with thrillers and horrors after the famous piece of music from "Psycho".

Hannibal - NBC

 

Hannibal is a TV spin-off from the movie "The Silence of the Lambs".  The series could be classified as an action/crime/psychological/horror thriller. It does not really fit into one genre. The cinematography is smooth and interesting with different techniques making it a rather inspiring series when you look purely at camera work. However the rest of the series is inspiring. The use of haunting images such as the one below play with the audience's emotion as well as the character's making it an interesting psychological thriller.

Sourced from adventure-naturalist.blogspot.com

It mostly focuses on Will Graham's recurring nightmares and how he snaps from real life to these images of the 'Ravenstag' - which is now known to represent Hannibal Lector.

Sourced from thedailyfandom.com

The rest of the series is seen as a crime thriller as it follows Will Graham as he works for the FBI to solve the cases of the Chesapeake Ripper. The images you get from the crime scenes are horrifying but interesting to the audience.

The mise en scene fits the series perfectly with mostly dark scenes with pops of colour coming from Hannibal's 'meals'.  It also includes props that would make us turn away in horror such as the cello through the victim's neck.

This quote is from elucipher.tumblr.com and talks about the use of colour and props:
"Well, Hannibal isn’t the only TV show to have a distinct aesthetic or to use dense visual symbolism. Many past & present “prestige dramas”—Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Lost, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Rectify—are constructed and shot with the same attention to visual symbols and allusions, framing, lighting, palette, saturation, etc. These seem like proving grounds for television to perhaps develop its own aesthetic.
But there are many shows that don’t prioritise visual style: they’re more interested in telling a story, and making the fiction as natural as possible. Many TV dramas are slick, sleek, gorgeous surface without much depth; and crime/murder procedurals are particularly guilty of this; and it’s that’s an approach Hannibal really rejects.

Sourced from zuts.wordpress.com

What’s unusual about Hannibal is that it’s highly stylised in a way we’d ordinarily associate with cinema. Every frame is hypersaturated and lush and heightened. There are explicit visual symbols which shift and develop over the season, e.g. the antlers in the crime-scene become a stag, then a ravenstag, and finally the wendigo. It uses a distinct palette of colours: muted browns & blue-greys punctuated with lurid crimson, purple & yellow. Each shot is carefully framed; it makes significant use of negative space, light & shadow; and many of the scenes contain static, vivid, narrow-focus tableaux vivants (particularly crimes scenes / Hannibal’s feasts).
As Bryan Fuller says, it’s very elegant horror. Hannibal doesn’t want the act of looking to become unconscious or naturalised, because that would make the violence too palatable. But it also reflects the aesthetic of a murderer with a keen and operatic sense of artistry. So it repeatedly estranges the viewer with this jarring but beautiful cinematography that foregrounds imagery and symbolism and visual structures. It has a very dreamy, mythological sensibility. "

 This quote is from tillary.wordpress.com and it explains a small bit of how the cinematography is used to the producer's advantage: "This cinematographic illustration of “Will’s Gaze” extends even to scenes where Will is absent.
We can’t really see much of Hannibal’s patient. The strong lighting is warm and beautiful, like late afternoon, but also creepy and horror-esque: strong light and shadows, blurred background, peaking whites. Alluring but sinister. Hard to see. Just like it’s hard to really see Hannibal, who is the center of the story but also the center of all the plot and mystery. And of course, no one can really see him for what he is or the show would be over."

From the series I would take the colour scheme of simple muted colours but exaggerated colours on the main elements of the scene.

"I am a Crisis" - First Aid Advert

 

In 2012 the British Red Cross released an advert to shock and inspire Britons to learn first aid in order to save someone's life. This is weird place to be getting inspiration from  but it is a very haunting advert that does invoke fear into the audience.

The use of a typical night scene in a town with dark shadows but the warmth of street lamps implies normality but the voice over implies quite the opposite. It shows a clip of a family at the end which gives a homely feel but then the women says "I am a crisis, and I don't care who you are". It is a shocking thought and plays with the audience's emotions.

From this I would take the use of the street lamps as it creates the perfect tone for a thriller. I would also take the rough hand-held camera feel to it as it creates a POV effect on tracking shots making the audience feel as if they were the person following.

"Counting Bodies Like Sheep" - A Perfect Circle

 

  From the album eMotive released in 2004, 'Counting Bodies Like Sheep' has a rather sinister but mechanical feel to it and uses different noises to create a rich overlay of sound.

The drums sound almost like approaching footsteps whilst the clicking noises can resemble anything such as a switch being turned on or a lighter being ignited.

The use of human screams and echos add a sinister feel to it. It would create a tense and scary atmosphere for the scene which would be perfect for a thriller movie.

For my opening title I would like to replicate something similar to this with the use of assorted noises overlapping to create the same sort of feel.

'No Church In the Wild' - Filmed by Romain Gavras

 

  In 2012 the song 'No Church In the Wild" by Kanye West and Jay - Z was released. The video is of particular interest as it contain several things I would like to include in my thriller.

The colours are muted and dull showing the settings are not pleasant. The whole video is slow motion creating a calm feel to the chaos in the video. Both of these are something I would like to replicate.

Like in 'Hannibal', the important props are more colourful than the rest of the surroundings.  In the video the molotov bomb is a vibrant yellow and red making it stand out compared to the man's clothes and surroundings. It is useful to identify key props in the scene.

Like 'I am a Crisis', it is filmed using a handheld camera creating a rough feel to the scene and shows the chaos. I would like to feature that in my own thriller.