Analysis of 'No Country For Old Men'

Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.

Opening Scene:

In class we have watch a short opening of a film called 'No Country for Old Men', directed by the Coen Brothers'. This film was released in 2007 as an American crime thriller film adapted for the screen. The beginning built up tense very fast as there was not a picture with the voice-over so no-one knows who is talking at first as it's not revealed. A technique using a silhouette makes the opening scene very effective, this is because it makes the atmosphere seem dull and gloomy, this then adds on to the tension from the voice-over. The use of background music builds great tension as it's weary so goes with the scene shots. The film then goes into short shots of locations, these locations seem rather isolated and bare and this could give the audience an idea of what the film is going to be like and that something isn't right. 

The First Murder:

The man calmly walks up to the man in the car, asking him in a soft tone of voice to get out of his car. Even when he is about to murder the man he is still very calm and does it with no hesitation or emotion in his face. By not showing emotion in his face, this shows that the fact that he just killed someone doesn't bother him, this may make the audience believe he has a mental condition after knowing what he does. This then makes the audience want to carry on watching so they can find out 'why he did it?', 'will he do it again?' and 'who is he?'. This short scene was just to 'grab the viewers attention' right from the beginning, I believe the director did this well as when I was watching it I did not have a clue what was going to happen until it did.

This picture is when he tells the man to step out of the car, the expression on his face shows that he's kind of excited and overjoyed that he's about to kill the man but to the audience who haven't seen the rest of the scene he just looks like he's happy and wants to talk to the man in the car.

This shows when he is about to kill the man, it's almost as if he's enjoying the suspense himself by calmly killing the man.It shows that he wants to do it and can perhaps indicate that he has wanted to do it for a while and it's his first time, he can be linked to a child getting excited about doing something for the first time to show his mental state.

Hitchcock's Techniques

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock
(13 August 1899 - 29 April 1980)
English film maker and producer


“The essential fact is to get real suspense you must let the audience have information." --Alfred Hitchcock




Mind of the Audience 
Mind of the audience is used because Hitchcock believes that a film is all to do about the audience connecting with the ideas that he has in his head when making the films, he then thinks of a way of how to do this. This is a good technique because it makes more sense to connect the audience to the film before you start anything which could diverse this.
Frame for Emotion 
This is all to do with the camera and camera angles, for example if a shot was to be close up it could show emotion whereas if it was far away the emotion would not be so clear and therefore not be very believable or noticeable. This could be a good technique when connecting your story to the audience and making the character seem vulnerable.
Macguffin
This is to create pure suspense so is a very well used technique. When scenes are built around dramatic tension, it doesn't really matter what the story is about as the audience is already glued to watching the film. An example of Macguffin is in North By Northwest when "government secrets perhaps" is spoken because it's no longer needed to be informed.

Keep the Story Simple! 
This is a basic but crucial technique, the story needs to be kept simple so that everyone in the audience can understand it all the way through and not get lost and lose interest in the film.
Enigma
Enigma is a good technique but is risky, this technique refers to a puzzle, a riddle or difficult problem, or something mysterious or inexplicable. This is used so that people can predict what the answer is, it also makes the film more interesting. This can be used mainly for protagonist's that has to try and get the answer before the narrator gives it away or the film finishes.
Red Herring
Red herring is an idiomatic expression referring to a rhetorical tactic of diverting attention away from a certain item which holds significance. Red herring can also be seen as a false lead, assumed outcome or obvious solution which a writer plants so that the story fools the audience as they are guessing the real outcome.

Two Things Happening at Once 
This technique can build up a lot of tension because when two things are happening at once, a person would be trying to hear both sides and this is what the audience would do, when doing this the sound would rise and make the audience more involved and 'glued to the screen' which will make them want to watch the rest and not take their eyes of it.

Research upon a thriller.

OVERALL VIEW ON A THRILLER

A thriller uses three main techniques to 'scare' an audience, these are:

• Suspense
• Excitement
• Tension

The genre 'Thriller' is similar to the genre 'Horror' and can sometimes be mixed up, but the main difference is the amount of gore and blood. The thriller could use techniques to build up tension through a killing without showing all of the gore and blood whereas a horror shows it all and has less use with the three techniques. 

The main objective of a 'Thriller' film is to give all the audience alot of suspense so that they are worried what will happen next and are 'on the edge of the seat', so the climax has to be very high to make a thriller worth watching.

Popular thrillers are:

    

THE GODFATHER

One of the most popular thrillers of all time. The Godfather is an American film in the genre of Thriller and gangster-drama, this film is based a novel by Mario Puzo which was also intended to be in a genre of Thriller for readers. The film shows "Don", a man who is set in the old ways for him and his family which is then put to the test when another family need his help to start a drug-dealing business, the most used technique in this film is suspense, this is because the film is so contrasted that the audience don't know if he will sacrifice for the new way or coward back into his old ways.

The Godfather's main used image for advertisement.

AS Media Studies Introduction.

My name is Rachael Hale and this is my AS Media Studies blog, this is where I will be showing my production work following a short thriller film. All production work and research will be recorded within this blog through-out the making of my project, I will include annotations on all my video and picture work to explain why I did what I did, analysing it so it's very understandable to everyone reading. Thank you for reading my introduction and I hope you enjoy my following work.