Understanding of Convention
Essay Preview: Understanding of Convention
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The thriller genre is heavily reliant on suspense tension and excitement to create attraction for the viewers. It is successfully portrayed in the film by the use of non- non diegetic sounds and editing.
The convention of editing was used well to give the viewer a sense of the high octane, adrenaline rush throughout most fighting scenes in the film taken. The editing help create conventions of the thriller genre especially with the use of short camera shots with duration no longer than three seconds. This was shown in the final fight scene where Brian kills multiple threats to his daughters life and successfully saves her from the grasp of a prostitution ring. While he is in his final fight, the camera shots have a very short times span and when the shot changes, it has very different angle so you can see most parts of the fight. The directors purpose of doing this was to give the audience a similar feeling to what Brian and his enemies were experiencing in the film without you actually being there. These camera shots and angles were put in place to get the audiences blood flowing and excitement levels aroused. The camera techniques used had a strong effect on the audience and successfully achieved the authors purpose. The fighting scenes in Taken can be compared to those from James Bond, Quantum of solace. The scenes involving Mr Bond fighting an enemy involve very similar techniques to Taken including short camera shot period and multiple changing of shots to enforce a high adrenaline rush feeling. These films are also quite similar because James Bond and Brian Mills are very similar characters who are both skilled in combat, agility and quick thinking. Summing up, editing helped give the viewer a sense of being in the film and heightened levels of adrenaline with it short camera shots.
Non diegetic sounds were also key convention in Taken showcasing multiple aspects of the thriller genre. The main emotions of suspense, tension and excitement that the thriller genre attempt to heighten were executed at a high level. The main non diegetic sounds used were fast paced background music with a high BPM, heart beat sound effects and also loud sharp sound effects. And example from the film is when Brian infiltrates the Rue de Paradis, a hidden building in the city used as a brothel. As he finds the man who he threatened to find and kill, a short segment of quiet, sharp sounds come into hearing. Straight after there is a single high tone which carries on for a few seconds causing tension and suspense for the viewer, it is evident that something big will occur very soon. A fight scene then occurs which is followed by background music with a drum and bass theme. The beat of the drum causes adrenaline for the viewer. All these sounds highlighted the directors purpose of heightening the main emotions in the thriller genre which is the main objective when creating a thriller. This convention added to the audiences emotions, making them feel more involved in the film by the use of high BPM background music and high note sounds. This mainly created suspense. The use of non-diegetic sounds were key in creating the main emotions that the thriller genre endeavour to withhold.
Gender representation was a key concept in Taken and was mainly shown through the dominance of male and stereotypical femininity in movies. Woman in films over the last forty odd years tend to highlight these main attributes: Beauty, size/physique, sexuality, emotional and relationships. In Taken, the emotional and beauty factors are very prominent throughout the film and the conventions of costuming and lighting.
Costuming was used constructively to help identify and portray gender representations of both the male and female sex. Throughout the film males were seen as the dominant gender with females being inferior, this has been a commonality in most films over the last fifty years. This was visible in the brothel scene at the construction site where the males are seen as the dominant gender. They are wearing casual warm clothing (pants and a jacket) while the inferior females are wearing a very little amount of clothing