Genre Research Summary

In 'Thrillers', the titles tend to be in bold fonts, and in both Arlington Road and The Usual Suspects black and white are the predominant colours. Fading in and out quickly seems to be a recurring theme, it adds a spookier effect. 


Both non-diegetic and diegetic music is used, in Arlington Road the short scene of the man in the hospital, we can hear the sounds of trolleys being wheeled by, along with other usual sounds you would expect to hear in a hospital; The Usual Suspects uses non-diegetic through the majority of its title sequence, a violin is the main instrument, giving a creepy unnerving feel to the film.


In 'The Usual Suspects', there are no characters in the opening sequence, and yet it still provides a spooky opening; Arlington Road uses one character at the very beginning, however he is not creepy, or scary in any way, although he has blood on his shirt, he does not seem a threat to us. Throughout the titles of Arlington Road, there are no characters established, simply shots of children playing, and one shot of a dog. This shows that we don't necessarily  need to use a great number of people to produce a scary opening sequence. 


The mise en scene for 'The Usual Suspects' is extremely simple, light reflecting on the water. It is it simplicity that makes it creepy, 'Arlington Road' takes the opposite approach. Lots of shots and pictures of the neighbourhood in different camera effects e.g black and white, sepia, negative, make it unnerving and uncomfortable to watch. 


Engimas are used thoroughly throughout 'Arlington Road', in the first sequence we ask ourselves, who is the boy? what happened to him?. When we are shown repeated shots of small children, we get the clear message that a predominant theme is children. 'The Usual Suspects', provides Engimas because we wonder who's point of view are we seeing the light reflecting on the water.


Fast cut editing is used throughout 'Arlington Road' to unsettle the audience, and make it appear like more is going on, and create more tension and fear. In our opening sequence we will use a lot of fast pace editing, to build excitement and tension.