The Usual Suspects - Textual Analysis - Callum Horncastle

 Callum Horncastle - Textual Analysis

The extract from The Usual Suspects constructs the style of a thriller using Mise En Scene, Camerawork, Editing and Sound.
The beginning scenes with the first man sitting on the ground, lighting a cigarette. The whole setting is very dark, the main source of light is from the cigarette itself, this shrouds the entire area with a gloomy place with the uncertainty of whom else might be lurking in the shadows.

The shots are eye-level and high angles, looking down on this character, showing that he is most likely to be a victim of some sort. The ambient sounds bring more uncertainty to the scene, as it’s awfully quiet, usually a queue for something bad to happen.

When he drops his cigarette onto the oil, lighting up the area, the area is lit up slightly, showing another enigma, questioning where the fire will lead.

Only for it to be put out by the second character, creating a great sense of suspense once more, as the shot of the fire being put out is focused on the fire, and not the character, meaning we cannot see him.
The camera then slowly pans up to face him, but due to the little lighting, his face cannot be seen, creating an enigma around the character, causing the audience to think, “Who is this person?”

 

Throughout the next few scenes, the second character’s face is never seen, making him a complete mystery. Even when he is talking to the first character, he cannot be seen.

When the second character light’s up his own cigarette, his mouth is just out of shot, making the cigarette seen, but his face still remaining hidden.

Animatic - Storyboard

We put together a storyboard to see how the production would turn out.
Keira put together the dialogue from my script, whilst I drew out the shots themselves.

After finishing the storyboard, Stephen took photos of the individual shots and then sent them to me, where I put the images into Sony Vegas to create an animatic.

Here is the animatic below.

 

 

This version of the animatic is after the production with the audio from the final product added in to match the exact timing.

Location

As location scout I looked at a variety of different areas where we could situate our scene within the college premises:








In the end, I chose option three, as it had the almost 'dark' atmosphere we required for the scene. I then drew up a floor plan to show how the scene would be laid out and to show the 180 degree line.

Risk assessment

1) The railings in the room are a trip hazard.

2) The curtain at the back is also a trip hazard .

3) One of the chairs had an unstable leg, so it was extra effort to stay balanced.

4) The door had to be rested against by a person on the other side otherwise it opened by itself and that would create differences within each shot.

Sound editing

As we all had to have involvement within editing, we split the majority of each side of editing between two groups of two. I and Jacob were tasked to complete sound editing. The first thing we had to do was to get a sound clip of footsteps, this was so we could sync this sound with the footsteps within our sequence. We found it on a site called AudioBible, this site has soundclips that are copyright free and are free to download and use. We then pasted the sound into the editing software and placed it into the sequence when a footstep was needed. Other sound clips were needed such as the opening/closing and creaking of a door as well as the sound of a chair being placed and water being poured onto the floor. Some sound clips had to be found on YouTube, in order to get it onto our editing software we had to convert in into an mp3 then save it.

Filming the sequence

When it came to filming the content; I used the basic camera given to us as well as a tripod along with lighting equipment to go with it.
As we already had a plan of action because of the storyboard it was easy to decide where to stand to get the needed shots. I established an 180° line within the scene that is between the characters, this was established prior to the conversation start to tell the audience where the two characters are in the frame. I attempted to use a range of different techniques, for instance, the sequence begins with a tracking shot in which I follow the protagonist. During the conversation I used wide shots along with OTS shots. Along with an ECU on the protagonists shoes as he walked. The picture shown is proof of my filming.

Shot Reverse Shot

Shot Reverse Shot

Definition - Shot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character.

As you can see by this diagram, the shot reverse shot utilizes the 180 degree rule and the eye line match, the main fundamentals of the shot reverse shot.

This continuity editing technique improves the scene massively as without this you would just have a boring scene where you just see both of the subjects in one shot talking to one another. But with it, you create more of a masterpiece which can emit depth and tension.