Conventional Editing and Lighting in a Psychological Thriller

Conventional Editing and Lighting in a Psycholoigcal Thriller

Editing
The editing in a psychological thriller typically tends to be quite rapid and fast paced when cutting from shot to shot. This is to implicate the hightened emotion and normally the thoughts of the characters in the film. The rapid editing creates the illusion that things are going a lot quicker than what they actually are and thus creating the 'on edge' feeling to the audience.
To create an unstable state of the mind to display to the audience, scenes might be repeated and layered over other ones. The audio might also be used in this manner. It could create the sense that a person has a repressed memory and/or a secret to hide. This could result in creating a mysterious feeling and suspenseful film. 


An example of fast paced editing that creates a thrilling effect is in Kill Bill Vol. 2, an action thriller by director Quentin Tarentino. The fight between The Bride and Bill up to 0:25 seconds shows how fast paced editing can make the scene seem a lot more fast paced and create the illusion that there is a lot more going on than there actually is. Another trick is to show certain movements shown from different angles. To swap the angle of the camera again would make the scene look a lot more rapid.





The editing can be that rapid that there can even be 3 different shots in the space of 1 second.

This is exampled in this scene when at 0:17 seconds all of the following shots occur. 

It is particularly effective to alternate between a middle shot in the first shot, a long shot in the second and then a medium close up in the last. To have two shots that can signify the most important element of the scenes, the samurai swords, impliment danger. To add the middle long shot as an establishing shot is useful as it puts into perspective the close proximity between the two characters in the scene. It implies inpending danger and the severity of what is occuring in the scene.

An example of sharp, fast paced editing yet mixed with slow elongated shots is in the psychological thriller Shutter Island.


In this scene there are elongated scene where there isn't much dialog and no action and then quick paced shots with a lot of action occurring corresponding. This effect that this has on the audience is that it adds a lack of consistency and also a lack of safety. It gives the idea that the audience cannot rely on what they are seeing on screen to know how the result of the characters will turn out. This is because the mix in pace and lack of consistency takes away and fluency that the story has and creates tension.



Lighting

An example of how editing and lighting effect a genre is a scene from The Sixth Sense. This is another psychological thriller that has been dubbed as having one of the greatest and unexpected cinematic twists of all time.



In this scene, the lack of light is used to a great and atmospheric advantage but without implications of impracticality. This means that the light, or lack of it, isn't used in an obvious way such as 'the dark should scare you'. Instead it is used in a way that suggests that the dark is a normal thing especially in this particular environment, but because of the lack of emergency is should cause, it causes more.

At 0:16 - 0:18, the emphasis is on those 2 characters in the centre, but then because of the way that the room is lit a shadow is created and passes the 2 characters. The way that the shadow is just a shadow makes it completely anonymous, thus creating more tension and is a more thrilling atmosphere, leaving unanswered questions as to the other person in the room with them.

Both the editing and the lighting credit the genre of psychological thriller as the lack of consistency, clarity, simplicity and impracticality show the mixed up and almost deluded mentality of the characters and clearly shows the holes in the plot lines that conventionally exist in this genre, which leaves it the audience to piece together for them self.