I figured that getting as much out of the few films that somewhat match our genre, since it’s kind of avant garde for the modern times, would be a good thing, even if the analysis is short. Getting even the slightest bit of inspiration could be the difference between a good shot and an amazing shot. Momento is a good shot for this since this film is also kind of non-traditional. It is completely reversed anyway, so taking inspiration from a film that isn’t done too often in modern films could help us out a lot in the long run.
This clip from Memento shows the calm after a sort of “storm” and that men are aggressive in certain ways. Mise en scene aspects, such as props and lighting, add to this meaning very well. The placement of the blood, the gun, and the bullet shell all indicate violence; we see the main figure in this clip shoot someone towards the end, which shows that men have violent tendencies. The pacing of the clip is slow in the beginning due to very long shot durations, specifically a close up shot of the polaroid. The pace quickens, however, with insert shots of bullets, blood, broken glasses, and a dead man. It is important to note that the clip is reversed/backwards. The pacing of the clip shows how cold hearted men can be after an act of violence. The non diegetic sound in this clip is slow, almost eerie music, which contributes to the overall creepy vibe of the whole clip.
Christopher Nolan had a mystery, low budget film called Following in 1998.
Since this is a mini-case study, not much in depth research will go into it, but a few surface level information tactics will be in use.
The executive producer of the film was Peter Broderick. He’s dabbled in many other films, not just mystery films and produced those as well. The film’s budget was around $6,000. Compared to today, that number might be higher, but it’s very low budget even for the late 90’s. This movie was shot on film rather than digital. Nolan himself said they did it to challenge his crew to film the movie and to save money. Film itself can save money since there isn’t as much technology to use as much as digital film might use. Production for this film took about a year to finish. Some issues were the money since no film could be wasted. This led to the actors always having to rehearse their lines and actions very well so they could do it in minimal takes. The lighting was a challenge since it could’ve halted production since the time of day may be not the best and he had to use his local friends and family’s homes to shoot some scenes. Finding how it was distributed was difficult, but it was through the use of platforming. It was released in a few places at first, then to many other cities and countries following it. It grossed $240,495 upon release, so the money was definitely earned back. This film was independent, since it was released under Next Wave Films. Momentum pictures distributed the film to many major theaters afterwards. He marketed the film so that hints and clues were given to the audience for the story but didn’t show any real concrete or confirmed information through trailers and teasers. The film didn’t have much media synergy with any other sector of business, so there was no cross promotion or any of the sort. It was exhibited through theatrical release in theaters in 1998-1999. A person can find the film on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime, or YouTube.
In order to get a real feel for what our title sequence should feel like, I thought I should analyze a few other title sequences to get the feel of what a mystery movie should be like. I chose to do both version of Murder On the Orient Express, one from 2017 and the other from 1974. Not only will it show a comparison between the two movies, but also the change over time of mystery movie sequences.
1974 Version
Opening title sequence from Murder On the Orient Express, 1974
Since the first two minutes are literally just titles, I chose to look at the following scene of the sequence. The crime is introduced through newspapers with various superimpositions and graphic match cuts of said newspapers. The lighting of the broken into house is dark with some color correction to make it look blue and most likely evoke more sadness. The editing isn’t too fast paced as the crime is taking place and the villain would need to be quiet when committing said crime. The use of a newspaper superimposition shows that the story is newsworthy and a big deal if it made the front page, so someone would need to investigate the crime that took place. The dark lighting concealed the criminal’s identity, so we wouldn’t know who did it. The sound is mostly non-diegetic as it’s just a soundtrack over the events taking place. The fonts and letters appear black and red at the reveal of a murder of the kidnapped little girl. The first scene just reveals what the detective is meant to investigate rather than the detective starting an investigation immediately. Different cinematographic elements such as tracking shots of the killer, long shots of the car driving away, and deep composition demonstrates the evasion of the killer and how easily they can hide their identity. The few props used (teddy bear, newspaper, crushed toys, etc.) showed that a little girl was the one taken and the destroyed things could also represent a destroyed childhood.
2017 Version
Opening title sequence of Murder On the Orient Express, 2017
As seen in this title sequence, they don’t introduce a mystery at all, but more introduce a detective and that he has some crime to solve, but it is unknown to the audience at the moment. The sequence shows a tracking shot of a child running in the beginning, the audience doesn’t know what for. The child is dressed in the attire appropriate for the region they’re in, Jerusalem. Little ellipses are used to show the child running up to a house and the small time passage within it. The child then delivers what is now seen to the audience as eggs, the props used, to a chef, as seen by his white costuming and the decor of everything in the kitchen. A close up is then seen of an hourglass to show the eggs cooking, but could also show the time crunch of the detective in the future of the movie. A midshot is seen of a man with a French accent, but the back of his head as the eggs are delivered to him. The non-diegetic sound in this scene is high pitched and fast paced to demonstrate the child’s rush in collecting the eggs. The next few shots are short fast shots of the child getting eggs and cuts to a long shot of the man about to eat the eggs. He then measures the egg very precisely. The significance of the measuring shows how precise he is and hints at him being a detective. The guard even says how he needs to “perform a miracle” to solve a mystery. The dialogue hints to him having to solve a mystery quickly, or something significant if it’s a miracle.
from Murder On the Orient Express (2017)
The differences between the two of these shows how mystery has evolved over the last 5 decades, as there’s more symbolism in modern mystery movies instead of just having the titles and the crime revealed to the audience as in 1974.
Audiences can vary depending on the sort of movie you want to show to them. After looking at certain demographics and effects movies can have on an audience, finding the right audience for mystery movies proved to be a bit of a lot to research, but I was able to find what I was looking for using a variety of websites and different psychological concepts.
Demographic for Mystery
Mystery narratives tend to draw in the older crowd, typically 18+. Not particularly because of the content, but it deals with a lot of mature themes that usually don’t appeal to a younger audience like and action super hero movie would. According to Paul Ardoin, a mystery genre novelist, his demographic of age is only 5% under the age of 30, and the rest 31 and above. Seeing this age curve when it comes to the mystery genre in simple novels translates to film, but can be skewed lower since younger people won’t have to read and instead enjoy a movie. Mystery movies used to bring in more males with the use of many male leads, but as these sorts of movies evolved in representation, women and men seemed to even out a little more.
Me in a movie theater trying to solve the mystery
Another thing that goes into the demographics of mystery narratives is the idea of the Hermeneutic code, introduced by Roland Barthes. This code refers to the idea that an element in a story isn’t explained or is left for the viewers to wonder why it’s unexplained and it keeps them hooked on the story. This creates a sort of enigma, and the story throughout is able to tie up any loose ends and give the audience the answer they are truly looking for (Chandler, 1). For a younger audience, they might get impatient or ask too many questions/get confused as to why it isn’t out in the open for them. An older audience would be able to try and figure out why this happened or why it didn’t and their anticipation to figure out what’s going to happen next.
Demographics in thriller
Graph depicting ages seeing thriller films
Thriller films typically draw in a younger audience. As it says in the name, a thrill comes along with seeing a film like so. When I say younger audience, I typically mean young adults, as reflected in the graph, from 18-24 years old. Since thrillers typically depict more heavy subjects (such as violence, drug abuse, etc), it makes more sense that a more mature audience would be the dominant demographic of that genre. Since our film isn’t too much focused on thriller demographics, not too much research shouldn’t be extremely required since most of our research has steered towards two genres.
Since I’m doing a more Classic Detective title sequence, analyzing a film with that same sort of genre and its title sequence would be beneficial to my own film. I thought Crooked House, directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, would be a good representation of the genre I need for my title sequence. It has elements of crime, mystery, drama, and thriller content.
Mise-en-scene
Lighting
lowkey lighting
done so to create an ominous and mysterious mood
couples with the non-diegetic sound
Props
needle and liquid create a mysterious aura
needle associated w/ poison
Costuming
man in plaid shirt to show a normal person
woman with red nails and bracelet
contrast between the two characters
Framing
open framing
keeps the character’s identities hidden
offscreen space used to keep up the mystery
Blocking
woman standing over man
position of power
could show the evil ways of women
Cinematography
Movement
pan-tilt after woman leaves frame initially
pull-back as woman leaves the frame
Angles
low angle shot of house at the end
tilt moving from a low angle to a high angle
Distance
long shot of woman
close-up of needle
Misc.
establishing shot of woman (also a long shot)
open framing
shallow focus
Editing
one long take
possible cutaway from man in the chair to the house
superimposition of titles
continuity with long take
Sound
Diegetic
mysterious coughing in the back
clicking of heels (possible femme fatal)
slight sound of needle injecting liquid
Non-Diegetic
low pitched soundtrack all throughout shot
Summary
All throughout the title sequence, every little thing done is meant to show a sort of mystery. The setting being dark with the lighting and the use of a needle with an unknown liquid all equates to a mysterious atmosphere. The contrasting costuming between the two characters show that the women are represented as evil or manipulative with the use of the needle and the mysterious liquid. The blocking of the woman and man showed the woman in power since she resides above him and is injecting something in him. For the use of cinematography, the establishing shot is of the woman, but in shallow focus since her identity is still a mystery. The close-up of the needle shows the importance of it within the next scene while also preserving the identity of the woman. There wasn’t anything too significant with angles, just that the house being shot from a low angle could show its superiority. The editing didn’t have too much within it, since the whole sequence was one long take rather than shorter and quicker paced editing. The scene possibly cutaway from the man in the chair to the shot of the house to show the importance or connection of the house to the woman and her antics. The titles were superimposed onto the screen just to display the titles of course. The diegetic sound added to the mystery since there was coughing coming from offscreen and the audience would have no way to tell where it might’ve come from. The clicking of heels might’ve signified the woman as classy/materialistic since heels are expensive, then might’ve symbolized a femme fatal character type. The non-diegetic sound, just the soundtrack, which is low-pitched, adds to the mystery since its suspenseful and spooky sounding.
So this week has been stressful and hectic since my blog was a little difficult to get started, but once I got the hang of it, I really got my blog rolling.
Struggles
I wasn’t really sure how to format the pictures correctly so that it would be exactly right next to the text, so the first day (Tuesday) I had to spend some of my research time trying to find out how to really format those pictures in the best way I could so the formatting wasn’t completely ruined.
Us mixing all of our genres into one big mess
Research was another difficult part since mystery films aren’t that prominent in the industry anymore and mostly came out in the early to mid 1900s. There have been remakes in the present, but the genres may have been a bit skewed or changed so it wouldn’t exactly fit the genre I really needed. Our film also had many different genres combined into them just to mostly fit the timeline of 1990s, so combining all the research of mystery, crime, drama, and thriller became a bit of a struggle since many different components in those genres easily overlap and add to one another in different ways.
Me trying to make the best out of my blog posts in a short amount of time
The most concerning thing that comes with this project is the time management aspect since each blog post really takes up a lot of time, and then being able to implement the best style and information into one post and also make it look the best can be strenuous at times if I have other priorities going on at the same time (aka. sports, other classes, family, etc.). Because of these reasons, I’m already falling a little behind schedule, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem if I keep working enough to get everything done in the next few weeks with the planning stages and pre-production stages.
Accomplishments
While I did struggle with a few things here and there and my scheduling seems to be a big problem at the moment, I did get some really good information out of my research.
Me to Sitara when we finished all of our research
The genre conventions for the mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound for both genres (mystery and thriller) have really allowed me to be able to challenge them in certain ways and be able to develop the best kind of story for a mystery-thriller story. Talking with Sitara about all of our genres combined, making a more in-depth and though out story with all of the genres we looked at will be able to give us a better understanding of what our title sequence should look like. Once I really look into certain title sequences instead of mystery movies as a whole, I’ll have a much better idea of what our story should end up looking like. I ran out of time this week to try and complete a true in-depth analysis of a sequence, but once I get that done, I should be able to move on to the preproduction stage.
The victim in Murder On the Orient Express.
I was also able to figure out how to navigate WordPress easily and even be able to organize my posts by the certain category they are (research, pre-production, production, post-production, and reflections). In doing this, I can look at whatever posts I need to to remember when I planned it and how I imagined it to look before without needing to scroll through every single blog post that I’ve ever uploaded. I also learned how to link movies just by clicking on a word and inserting a link in those words, such as Murder On the Orient Express. This allows me to immediately see what movie I was talking about and to see the specific plot line, genres, actors, directors, etc.
With everything I’ve learned this past week in mind, I have to start off this week quickly and get all the research that I need to get done so I can start planning out the script and being able to truly envision the movie that I want it to be.
While researching all these films and openings, you begin to see a certain pattern with certain directors and what they really like to do with their films. So, with a list of director’s and finding some of their quirks in their films I thought would be a good idea for our film and be able to take inspiration from those little things they implement to create that much more meaning to their films.
straight to the point and no deep underlying meanings
Seeing the different techniques between these directors and how they conveyed certain genre conventions of mystery and certain meanings provided a good amount of inspiration for how our film is going to play out. Some information seemed a little difficult to dig up, but a little digging never hurt anyone.
Through my research today on gender representation, I found that no movies exist that follow the sort of narrative I want with a female lead detective. Fun. Although, I did find a few movies within the mystery genre with aspects of thriller with a female lead, but not necessarily a detective as the main character. A good example of this is Kahaani, directed by Sujoy Ghosh. The main plot line of the movie follows a pregnant women attempting to find her husband while being pregnant at the same time. The movie portrays the main character, Vidya Bagchi, as a strong, courageous women who can conquer all of these obstacles to be able to finally find her husband. Although, this allows for Vidya to be shown as women typically are as emotional and weak/vulnerable. In multiple scenes throughout the movie, we see Vidya losing her composure and breaking down crying from the stress and hardships she encounters. This can be considered a good mix of representation for women in mystery movies as they can often be portrayed differently, as I will go into now.
Gender Feature Mean in Many Different Genres
Starting with the general idea of how gender is represented, according to a study conducted by the University of Southern California, women are either shown less, or given less meaningful lines in a film depending on the genre. (Ramakrishna, 1996) Looking into the “psycholinguistic normatives” (Ramakrishna, 1996) between the two genders, these representations come more easily into play.
Chart showing gender difference in movies and the industry
For movies overall, the dialogue shared between females and males can be seen as unequal and more focused towards the male leads or male characters in those movies. The chart here describes it and shows that male characters have over two times more dialogue pieces than females in movies overall.
Women in Mysteries
The first Sherlock Holmes film debut
In many mystery genre films, especially in the early 1900s when those movies were prominent, the women were portrayed as helpless, or even the victim in certain murder mysteries. In rare cases, such as Murder At the Gallop, it’ll show the women as the lead detective or helpful to the case. This stigma of women being helpless/the victim most likely stemmed from the first detective film adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, called Sherlock Holmes Baffled, in 1900-1903 directed by Arthur Marvin. This first showed the best detective as a male who was successful, so the idea of a female detective being good or the best would be compared to Sherlock, and not seen as good either.
The first The Thin Man
In the 1930s, the Thin Man series came out with a woman, a “carefree wife” named Nora, was portrayed in the way earlier described. She was the wife to the detective, not even helpful to the detective himself. Throughout the series, we see Nora appear more carefree, and get less screen time than the main detective which is understandable. This could’ve set the stage for women’s appearances in mystery film for decades later until more progressive ideals could’ve come about.
In the 40s-50s, there were more cynical films, reflecting the tone and mood from the World War and the aftermaths of the Great Depression of the 30s. Detectives became more ruthless and leaned towards more crime and violent genres of mystery. Many movies were made starring all male leads. To list a few examples, Alan Ladd in The Blue Dahlia, Lloyd Nolan is Time To Kill, and Robert Montgomery in Lady In the Lake. In Lady In the Lake, the beginning of the movie starts with the wife of the main character taking advantage of him/divorcing him and marrying another man for his money. This portrays women in a negative light and simply materialistic. In Time to Kill, Heather Angel played as a “leading lady”. This meant that she simply acted as a love interest in the movie for the lead role of the detective.
Films with female detectives didn’t fair as well as others with the typical male detectives did. In 1991, V.I. Warshawski debuted in theaters and was meant to continue on as a series. The main character was Victoria Iphigenia, play by Kathleen Turner, as a private eye, solving the mystery of the murder of Boom-Boom Grafalk. It didn’t perform well at box offices, whether it was the fault of the casting or the time or the plot itself is up to interpretation.
In recent years, more TV shows have come out with female leads as detectives and show them as strong, individual women, such as Murder, She Wrote, Castle, and The Fall. Although, some of these TV shows can be considered more Standard Private Eye or even police procedural, more gender representation in a positive light for women being a lead detective and defying the odds is what we aim to achieve in our title sequence as well. By challenging the typical representation of women in mystery films, we are giving ourselves a challenge, but also painting women in a positive light.
Going off of the research I’ve conducted over the last few days, I’ve also come across the different types of mystery and thriller films and how easily other genres may overlap in doing so. Covering most to all of these types and blends will lead to us having a better understanding of what to do for our specific narrative following the struggles of a detective. I will also address movies that are categorized in these blends as well.
The standard private eye type of mystery film mostly follows the plot line of a detective film, but with a more official approach to it. More psychology is involved in these types of films, so more psychological attacks rather than physical and more mental mind games rather than the typical mystery here and there. (Libguides, 1) The “Private Eye” part comes in as an actual private eye instead of being named a detective. These films typically overlap with the crime genre, which is what Sitara is covering in her research. A great example of this is Zero Effect, directed by Jake Kasdan. While this film also has elements of comedy in it, the narrative of a “Private Eye” mystery film is kept throughout the film through its main characters being Daryl Zero and Steve Arlo. They’re both the “private eye” in this instance and they deal with blackmailing and complex crimes throughout the film and different mind games the villain is playing on them. The plot of this film is that they are two of the best detectives in the world who have to Our film isn’t typically following this sort of story formula, so while it’s good to differentiate between the types of movies, this type is not too useful to us right now.
Cozy mysteries are typically movies that don’t involve a lot of violence or action in many ways, but in just a simple small, closed off town and can be solved through simple intuition and problem solving. Police and CSI procedures are typically left out of these sort of films. These types of films can easily overlap with classic detective films. (Libguides, 1) A good example of this sort of film is Murder At the Gallop, directed by George Polluck. Miss Marple figures out the murder with her skills as a detective and being able to deduce who would’ve done something like that easily. Not a whole lot of violence is seen throughout the film as Miss Marple would probably be easily hurt from said violence. This film will also be useful for the representation of women is mystery films, as our main character is meant to be female and could add to the struggles of that detective. This genre and the next genre I’m going over is sure to be a good idea of what we want our film to end up like.
Classic detectives movies are exactly what they sound like: a classic detective investigating a mysterious murder with a close-knit circle of suspects that all have a well developed motive to kill the victim. The difference between this and the Cozy mystery is that there could involve violence or different mind games to go with the detective’s investigation. Though, they are still very easily overlappabe in creating a mystery film. A movie that follows this formula nearly perfectly is Murder On the Orient Express, directed by Kenneth Branagh. The main character, Hercule Poirot, is stuck on a train and left to investigate the murder of Cassetti that occurred on that train with a pool of suspects who all had a connection to the victim. This is truly the type of mystery title sequence we want to go for in our project. Other obvious examples would be Sherlock Holmes and Ace Adventura.
In order to truly find out what kind of conventions and narrative structure I would need to follow for this specific detective movie, Sitara and I analyzed a scene from the movie in order to do this. Compiling all the information we gathered, we put it all into one video, which can be seen from here.
The full video, blocked by Fox on YouTube so I’m unable to have it embedded, can be seen here through Google Drive.
This subgenre of mystery is a little different from the typical formulas mentioned earlier. The detective takes on the role of the police officer. (Libguides, 1) A familiar narrative in this genre would be the idea that the police are not doing enough to solve the crime, so the detective will take things into their own hands in order to solve the crime once and for all. Another things that makes this genre more different is the amount of mistakes the detectives could make which allowed room for error and development of their character as well. A prime example of this genre is M, directed by Fritz Lang. Following the outline that I stated, the plot of this movie follows the true police being unable to catch a child-murderer, but instead of “detectives” finding the criminal, other criminals join in to find out who’s committing the crime. It’s different than a typical police procedural film, but the conventions follow that sort of mystery very well.
Since thrillers are not a genre we are really focused on, I only researched the relevant topic of thriller mysteries rather than many different types of thrillers. Thriller mysteries are narratives with the idea of a corrupt social construct, perception of mystery, and more psychological ideas of solving mysteries, so a lot more deduction and logical flow of solving the murder/crime is invovled. (Libguides, 1) A movie that follows this narrative structure is A Simple Favor, directed by Paul Feig. A Simple Favor follows the narrative of one of the main characters, Emily, disappearing and the “detective figure”, Stephanie, to figure out where she is. Though, it’s considered a thriller of sorts because of the tricks and mind games and obstacles that Emily put in place for her. Having these sort of narrative strategies in the back of our minds, it may be able to spice up our title sequence that much more.
Concluding my research, this has really helped my narrow down my options to the sort of plot I want to establish for our title sequence, so our original skeleton is definitely bound to change.
Since our narrative falls under a total of four genres, researching all of them will take a lot of time, and then implementing aspects of all of those genres into will be a challenge. Although, having more information will give us more opportunity to create the best title sequence we can.
I researched the two genres mystery and thriller, having mystery being the main focus of the research.
Mystery
Scooby dooby doo, where are you…
Mystery is defined as a “subgenre of narrative fiction”. (Scholastic Professional, 1) The narrative story involves a murder that is unsolved or happened mysteriously. The main character (detective) solves the mystery through “logical deduction” (Scholastic Professional, 1) from the clues and information they find from their investigation. That’s the basic narrative aspect of the genre, they can take many different turns, but the skeleton of mystery films go along the guidelines of this. In tomorrow’s research when I address movies that fall under mystery, I’ll also go over the different types of mystery films that might benefit me in this project.
Through watching different mystery films (which will be addressed in another post), there are certain mise-en-scene, cinematographic, editing, and sound techniques that are typically followed.
Mise en scene-
Setting- countryside home, isolated, big cities, police stations
Costuming- 90’s get-up , protag in most recognizable get up
Lighting- mostly naturalistic, usually lowkey to obstruct the viewers view of the killer
Fonts used in mystery movies are typically simple fonts, or curly looking fonts. The colors are usually white or possibly gray-ish within mystery movies, for example Afterschool and Mystic River.
Thriller
Cause this is (a) thrilerrrrr!
The narrative of a thriller is to mainly build suspense and make the audience anticipate what’s going to happen next. Throughout the movie either a killer or some sort of violence is involved all throughout the film. An equilibrium is typically kept throughout the film and is left disrupted by the killer or the violence towards the victim soon enough. A big part of thrillers is the suspense and anticipation growing in the audience as they watch that part of the movie. This suspense is typically built through the other conventions listed below. (Filmsite, 1) In tomorrow’s research, I’ll go over different types of thrillers along with which movies they might correspond to.
Mise-en-scene-
Setting- isolated areas, dark alleys, house in the middle of nowhere
Costuming- villain in black, victim in white, detectives in uniform
Lighting- lowkey lighting, maybe some natural
Props- murder weapon (gun, knife, etc.), obstacles in house, object victim uses for defense
Cinematography-
Distance- close-ups to show fear, midshots to show the actual killing/violence, long shots to show isolation
Angles- high and low to demonstrate power between killer and victim
Movement- tracking shots and handheld to show chase or getting away from the killer
Editing-
Speed- fast to build tension, slow paced to build suspense (this also applies for sound)
Flashbacks- there may often be flashbacks if the victim and killer have some sort of connection
Sound-
Ambient sound- may have little sound if killing sequence is occurring or to build suspense
Sound Motif- if the killer or someone important to the killing comes onscreen, a motif may play
Diegetic sounds- heightened to build fear since the victim would only focus on that sound
Themes-
Reality, good vs. evil, perception, guilt, obsession
Fonts
The fonts used in thriller movies and in the titles are typically bold or have special little effects within them, as seen in The 5th Wave and Jason Bourne.
us mixing our genre conventions together
With all of these aspects coming into play and shaping our title sequence, I’m sure we can figure out what should go where and what shouldn’t. Plus, with Sitara researching drama and crime, it will show us the blend that would be best to set up our film.
Into The Truth 