‘Secret Window’ Textual Analysis

For more research on thrillers, especially psychological ones since our initial ideas have a similar feel to them, I decided to analyse another thriller film, Secret Window (Dir. David Koepp, 2004).

Before any shots are even shown on screen, there is a faint sound of clunking, or something knocking against something else. This sound already pulls the viewer in, as they wonder who or what could be making it and where it is coming from. As the first shot is shown, the sound is revealed to be windscreen wipers on a car. A man is staring almost into the camera. Through the use of mise-en-scene, he looks tired, with bags under his eyes and ruffled hair. He has a dedicated look on his face. This immediately gives the audience enigmas. They wonder what he is staring at and why he looks so tired, and possibly angry? This man is later found out to be called ‘Mort’.

The next piece of sound heard is of a man speaking slowly. At first, the audience does not know whether this is the voice of someone else, or is inside Mort’s head. This gives people the impression that he may not be completely sane and makes them have connotations of what insane people are capable of. The manner in which these words are spoken are very calm, yet they almost sound like orders, as if the voice is insisting that Mort does what he says. “Do not go back there” is one phrase that is said. The voice is not asking, it is telling. This makes the audience feel on edge and wonder what he is planning to do, or what he may have just escaped from.

As Mort reverses in his car and moves away from the camera, he is shown to be surrounded by snow. This gives the audience connotations that he may be isolated or stuck where he is and that he may not be able to escape.

As he steps out of the car and walks into the lobby of the motel building, the camera is placed outside the lobby window. With the window almost frosted over and Mort inside, this particular camera shot gives the audience the impression that he is being watched by someone. After taking a key and getting back in the car, he quickly drives up to a motel room door. The camera is replaced behind him here, again giving the feeling that someone may be with Mort, and that he doesn’t know he’s being watched. The quick driving for only a few seconds also show the importance of what is inside this particular room.

As he steps out of the car, the doors are shown to be red, a colour usually associated with danger in thriller films. As Mort unlocks the door and opens it, a non-diegetic soundtrack begins. It is almost a whooshing sound. This is not only signifying the opening of the door, but also the revelation as he sees a woman and another man in bed together. This gives the audience connotations that this woman may be associated with Mort, and that he was not expecting to see her here with someone else.

The soundtrack in the background has a feeling of eeriness, and is very creepy. The sound of the people shouting at each other are drowned out by it, until Mort screams at them both. The scream is not completely diegetic though, as a non-diegetic, almost death-like howl accompanies the scream. As Mort leaves the room flustered, a slight musical sting is heard. This may indicated that his life has just gone down in flames and that he may not be able to regroup. As he walks back to his car, a slightly different non-diegetic soundtrack begins, this time with more of a heartbeat-like tone, and sounding very much like a ticking clock. This gives the audience connotations that time may be running out for someone, or that something is going to go wrong with someone very soon.

Overall, this is a very intriguing start to a psychological thriller, and has given us many ideas of how to begin ours, and how to create tension from the word go.






- Taylor Gladwin

'The Jacket' Textual Analysis

When deciding upon which of our many ideas we would use in our final thriller film, we decided to do some research into the opening two minutes of other thriller films. This would give the group as a whole many ideas and hopefully would show us how to film our film correctly and professionally. I decided to analyse the opening of the psychological thriller ‘The Jacket’ (Dir. John Maybury, 2005).
The very first shot the audience sees in the film is of a war zone, shown through the eye of a gun, possibly a sniper rifle. A square is in the middle of the screen, showing where the gun is being aimed. This immediately gives the viewer connotations of what is happening. War and guns are associated with death, which is a conventional topic found in thriller films. This makes the audience feel on edge straight away, as they are now expecting some terrible things to happen in the film. The sound is also war like, with diegetic sound of a man talking frantically through a walkie-talkie, getting cut off once in a while. There is also ambient sound of a typical war, with the sound of gun shots and bombs being dropped. This makes the audience feel involved in the film and feel surrounded.
The whole shot is green, and stays that colour for the whole of the opening two minutes. This is partly because of the view through the rifle, allowing the shooter to see his target clearer. This could also show envy, jealousy or revenge, emotions that the colour green is associated with. This gives the viewer enigmas, as they wonder who the shooter may be and who he is aiming at.
As the opening credits roll over shots of the war zone, with people getting shot in the background and bombs going off, the credits have a font that is scribbled and blurred, another aspect that is associated with thrillers. Also, as ‘The Jacket’ is anchored on screen, there is a slight sound of a man faintly screaming and breathing out fast. This may be telling the audience what is to come and that they should be afraid of said ‘jacket.’

After the main credits have finished, ‘Iraq, 1991’ is anchored on screen for a few seconds. This immediately makes the audience think of death and destruction, as Iraq is a country that has seen a lot of war and terror. This makes the viewer feel scared, and also feel sorry for the soldiers that have had to go there and fight.

As the anchorage stops, a non-diegetic piano-led ballad begins. It is a very soothing piece, and is contrapuntal to what is happening on screen. It is usually used for relaxation and calmness, and here it sounds like music used at a funeral, telling the viewer that there will be many casualties and that many funerals will have to be held for these soldiers.

As the non-diegetic soundtrack continues, very quick, almost subliminal message-like shots of politicians are shown on screen. Most shots are of American Presidents. This makes the audience think that people like the President are responsible for what is happening on screen and that it is their fault. The quick flashes of images stick in the viewers minds and make them feel brainwashed and unwell, much like many of the soldiers will feel. As these shots are happening, diegetic sounds of orders are being barked by highly ranked soldiers. Things like “get on your f*cking knees!” are used to make other people feel weak and small. Even though soldiers are shouting these things, with the shots of politicians on screen at the same time, and it makes the audience feel like they are being forced into this war and being made to work harder and harder by people in higher power than they are. This makes them feel angry at those people, and will make them feel more emotionally attached to the main character Jack Starks when he is introduced.

The opening two minutes of ‘The Jacket’ is a prime example of how to begin a thriller film well. It creates many enigmas for the viewer, and immediately draws them into the story.

- Taylor Gladwin

Audience Feedback

When our preliminary task had its premiere, we were very satisfied and were extremely happy that it was received well. There were laughs when there were supposed to be, and almost all our shots looked very professional.

After our preliminary task had been shown to the rest of the class, they gave us feedback on what they thought was good, and what they thought we could improve on. This was very helpful and we now know exactly what to improve on to make our thriller a success.

One piece of advice was that we should have slightly clearer dialogue in our film. We had a small conversation in our preliminary, but the words said were slightly mumbled. This could make our thriller look very basic if we do not improve on it, so that will be one of the important aspects that we focus on when filming.

Most people agreed that our shots very well filmed, and our match cuts looked really good. We were very happy with how these turned out. People did point out our bad pan in the last shot. We knew this was bad when we filmed it, but didn’t have enough time to re-shoot. We know that when shooting our thriller, all our camera shots must look professional. We also must make sure that our editing is perfect, to draw the viewer in and help them enjoy our film even more. We must also make sure that our editing follows the conventions of continuity, making the film seem more real. We used shot-reverse-shot well in our preliminary task, and also made sure the 180 degree rule was present and correct.

A suggested improvement was that our credits were slightly quick. We agreed, and will make sure that the credits in our thriller set the tone for the film and stay on screen for exactly the right amount of time.

Something that the audience actually didn’t notice was that we had a fellow class member’s feet in our final shot. When filming our thriller, we will have to make sure that there are no mistakes in any shots. Things like reflections in mirrors or doors have caused other groups trouble in the past, which have affected their grade.

- Taylor Gladwin + David Huxford

Advice from the Year Thirteens

The year thirteen we had been helpful in getting us started with the use in cameras and the tripod, however his advice was brief, but what he did talk about was the main points about using the equipment. We had a different year thirteen for learning editing. Editing seemed to look extremely complicated as most things never viewed before, but because one of the year thirteen’s was usually around, we continually bugged him on how to edit and make the getting started easier. When we first set off with the tripod and camera we went to the common room to film certain shots in preparation. Panning the camera on the tripod proved exceedingly difficult as the tripod was stiff to rotate, however the main idea of the task was helpful for our prelim task.

However, when the group of year thirteen’s came and gave us general advice about how to do our prelim was a lot better than the single person giving us advice. There advice was:

>Don’t use much dialogue; the cameras don’t pick up much sound
>Base your thriller on setting and location
>It isn’t character based, so acting isn’t important.
>Film in the same seasons for continuity reasons
>Don’t go over the top when it comes to props
>Lighting is very important
>Don’t shoot your footage on recognisable territory as it doesn’t look good

>(Prelim) it’s only a prelim so keep it simple
>Always shoot more footage then you have to
>Joke around for about ten minutes, and then get some serious work done
>Don’t smoke on camera because you look like an idiot
>Use the 180 degree rule for many shots in the thriller
>Always get everything you need before shooting on that day
>One camera shot can change our grade
>Have lots of creative input for our blogs
>Share out the work
>Take the tripod everywhere; it’s a rookie mistake if you forget it
>Plan it all out properly before hand
>Editing makes all the difference; don’t worry too much about bad shots >Don’t rely on people to act in the thriller. They are very unreliable and probably won’t do it
>Weather conditions are always a problem so be prepared
>Don’t lose anything
>Try to keep stuff the same on the next day of filming
>Don’t leave shooting till the last minute
>Always have more than 1 of each shot in case things go wrong, and finally
>The prelim will be an example to next year’s year 12 students so make it worth while

When we watched the other prelim tasks from last year’s year thirteen’s, it set the boundaries in our group. They mainly taught our group what to do and what not to do. We also saw the effects in which editing can have on a prelim, which in turn could affect the standard of the main task. Some prelims were very simple, yet at the same time some were very well done as the footage looked fluent and professional. Many of the ideas for our prelim came from watching the prelims from last year, so they seemed extremely helpful for our group in terms of preparing for our prelim and thriller.

- David Huxford

Pre-Production

The use of a story board in the pre production of the task is very important towards the overall presentation of the two minute thriller. The prelim task was very helpful in experiencing how to film our thriller. Planning what we had to do lead to much debate about what we should do on our storyboard. Seeing what other prelim tasks had accomplished, we decided to do an almost sequel to last years prelim task ‘Jack attack’. With the main characters brother in our group, we decided that spoofing this prelim would give us great experience, as well as have fun whilst doing it.

As we began planning our prelim task, he began with our 1st idea for our prelim task. After planning the story board, we made it over to the drama department to begin filming for our preliminary task. We only managed to film half of the prelim during our first lesson of filming as we run out of time, and for continuity reasons, we stopped filming for that day. However, because we ran out of time, we later realised that the room we had planned on using wasn’t free for us to use and thus we had to re think and re plan our entire preliminary task. This is what our other prelim was supposed to look like:







With a different room, their was different aspects of the film that we needed to consider, such as people walking past in the window and the different layout of the room itself. As a result, our final idea storyboard was as follows:

- David Huxford, Tom Winn, Taylor Gladwin & Brad Hart