CF:Conventions of a thriller film "The usual suspects" (Singer, 1995)

Sound:

• Immediately, church bells can be heard in the background, to show the audience that the boat that the scene is set on, is actually in a port, meaning they are not at sea, this would imply, unlike in horror movies, that other people authorities are nearby (police) meaning that they may get caught, this adds a sense of suspense for the audience which is conventional of thriller films.
• During the scene, a sound (of a violin or another similar stringed instrument) is present, it corresponds with the presence of the mysterious man, then when another danger becomes clear (the raging fire) the sound both gets louder and changes pitch. To have music which corresponds with danger and other presences in a scene is also conventional of both thriller and horror movies. At the start of the scene when the match is lit and the fire is large, the music is louder and different, then it dies down along with the fire on the match (only to come back again when the actual fire begins).
• At the very end of the scene, as the image of the burning boat fades, the next shot is a picture of a man in some sort of prison cell or federal facility, at this point, there are distant sirens sounding, which almost implies that he has been caught by the the authorites and has been put to justice.

Camera techniques:

• The first shot of the mytserious man is when he is at the top of a staircase, as he descends the staircase, the camera follows him, always managing to hide his face and therefore indentity is also hidden (from the audience), this is not conventional of thriller movies, but does occur in some.
• The first shot of the spilling oil shows how it is spreading around the boat, thus showing the extent of danger that the characters are in (with audiences naturally seeing explosives as a danger, espeically when characters have sources of ignition with them, cigarettes).
• A number of times throughout this opening scene, there is a slow zoom towards a pile of rope, which clearly has something inside it, as at the end of the shot, the camera shot shows a small gap in this pile where something must be hiding, but the audience is left wondering what it may be, such mystery is not necessarily conventional of thriller movies but does occur in some, but this movie it self is known for it's reucrring theme of mystery.

Editing:

• As the camera zooms towards the 'pile of rope', the shot fades and the next shot is one of the progtagonist in a cell, the way that the shot that creates mystery and has the audience wondering, then fades to another shot, almost tells the audience that the rest of the film after this mysterious shot and scene is going to explain via a number of situations and events, how the situation got to that point. This is not conventional of any one genre or theme of film, but does occur in alot of motion pictures, such as "Limitless" (Burger, 2011) which is actually a thriller film.
• When the camera is on the mysterious man, there are very few cuts, instead, the camera simply follows the actor, which means the shot was completed all in one take (not necessarily the first take though), this creates a focus from the audience's point of view on this character, possibly implying that he is going to be centred of the future events, the audience may hope that the clear fright of the vulnerable man towards the mysterious man is going to be explained.
• There are then a number of long shots (in terms of time, each around 3 seconds), although this is not actually a very long amount of time, but it is the fact that these shots have very little in to look at or to focus on that makes them seem long. This leaves the audience wondering what has happened in this shot (mysterious again), when actually it is clear that the wounded man has been shot, but at least the audience has been given the chance to decide for themselves.

Mise en scene:

• Firstly, the set has been designed to completely describe the persona of both the characters and the events to come in the movie. The set is dark, which is part of concealing the indentity of the mysterious man, this darkness is part of creating the mysterious theme in this scene. Also there a number of barrels of what one can infer to be an explosive substance, due to the corresponding sources of ignition held by the characters (the cigarettes), these barrels are clearly dangerous, thus adding to the already dangerous scene.
• The costume and appearences of the characters also convey the persona of the character themselves, this is conventional in terms of thriller movies. The mysterious man is wearing a long coat to conceal his identity, thus amplifying how mysterious this man really is. Then there is the wounded on the man, who has a similar hair style to the character who is also clearly a criminal in "Cape fear" (Scorses,1991), this leads me to think that certain appearences may be automatically tell the audience of the characters role in the film (e.g. whether he is good, bad, important etc.).

• In contrast to this, the man who has clearly been caught and is being questioned at the end of the opening scene is wearing prison clothes, and has a shorter, cleaner and more simplistic haircut. From this, you could infer that as he is a criminal, he has lost the freedom to choose his personal appearence in terms of hair style and clothing, and instead is chosen by the state, one could also infer that this means he belongs to  the society that he has commited crimes against. Essentially, I am trying to convey that the former actions and current living situations.