Taking Lives Essay

In what ways does "Taking lives" conform to or subvert what you consider to be the forms and conventions of the thriller genre?

The film "Taking Lives" includes many aspects you would expect to form the basis of a thriller. However, it does have some features that makes it different and that you may not usually find in a typical film of this genre.

The first factor that is typically found in this sort of movie is the idea of suspense and tension. This can be portrayed in many ways, for example music. Someone creeping around a corner with a gun to mysterious/scary music would create suspense. "Taking Lives" shows this concept of suspense a lot which grips the audience and keeps the film interesting. This suspense is a key factor in a thriller. It is the thing that keeps us on the edge of our seats and questioning the plot and motives of the characters. Suspense can be shown in many ways from fast shots of people running with fear to perhaps a long shot of a location from an unknown on-looker in the bushes. In "Taking Lives" the suspension is created with constant mystery; during the film there are several people who you suspect to be the killer. Also how they film some of the gory murders, they don't always show the whole thing but just keep the use of the sound to get it across powerfully and with suspense.

Several characters in "Taking Lives" are protagonists, they are portrayed to be normal at the start but then their story gradually unfolds during the film. This is something that is typical to find in thrillers as it is the basic structure of this genre and what the audience have come to expect. This also gives the director the chance to play around with twists and turns as characters discover things about their lives. The typical protagonist will often be emotionally detached and in "Taking Lives" they are also intelligent. The killer and Angelina Jolie are very intelligent in what they do and both have troubled histories which mean their emotionally driven. The psychological film "The number 23" uses this technique as well, as a guy realises after a while that he somehow lost his memory and forgot all about what happened in his life before.

There are usually moments in thrillers where the audience feel empathy towards characters of feel like they can realte to them. A few examples of this in "Taking Lives" would first be the scene where Angelina Jolie shows her vunerability and sensitive emotions when she's trying to scrub her body after the killer touched it. All of us feel vunerable at times and this also shows the audience how her character is not as perfect as it seems and this inperfection is something many can realte to. Several characters for example, Angelina and the killer show fear in the film. Again this is another emotion many will be able to understand and connect with, and this is another way of showing that their not perfect or completely fearless. This is especially interesting with the killer at the end of the film, we see him slip up for the first time and it is him who appears vunerable and fearful, showing he is still human and like everyone else. Finally, the audience sees how Jolie's character is an everyday person as well as an FBI agent. She lives her own life and stands up for herself showing a powerful woman which the female audience aspires to, and how she isn't afraid to show her emotions like loneliness, fear and vunerability.

Thrillers are known to start off ordinary and then become extraordinary, and the structure of the film then shows the journey back to normality. This creates the journey and the story that the characters are involved in and ensures the audience will want to watch until the end to see how everything turns out. "Taking Lives" does conform to this in a certain sense, but not completely because although the killer is murdered and the case is over, as far as we know Jolie carries on with the job that she does which means that there will be many more cases like that to come for her.

As expected, thrillers always have their action sequences. These bring excitement, danger and movement to the film which entertains the audience. Action sequences are very important in a thriller but they should be character or situation driven. The action in "Taking Lives" is not always obvious, but it is there. For example at the start of the film there is a car crash, but it all happens very quickly and you don't see it drawn out with slow motions and other effect that you would in an action film. It would be possible to create a thriller with few action sequences however most do conform to this aspect, including "Taking Lives".

A form that is always expected in thrillers is the mystery, puzzles, twists, turns and surprises. As mentioned earlier, this creates the typical structure as a thriller makes the audience constantly question what's going on and whose done what. "Taking Lives" certainly conforms to this and there were a couple of times when i thought i knew what had happened but turned out to be completely wrong. A few examples of these surprises in "Taking Lives" would be straight away at the beginning when the teenage boy pushes his new found "friend" in front of a car, when you find out why Jolie does the job she does, (she murdered someone when she was little), when the killer is actually the person who was acting as the victim and at the end when Jolie reveals she's not pregnant and has set the whole thing up to catch the killer. All of these were totally unexpected and definately grip you to keep on watching.

There are a few things in "Taking Lives" that did not match the typical forms and conventions of a thriller. The fact that it had a female lead was one of them; this is rare to see in this genre of film as it is usually the female who plays an assistant role to a male lead. It was almost implausible and it does prove the point that women that females do usually have to be young and beautiful to play the lead, whereas with males it doesn't matter as much. Another thing i noticed about the film was that although there was violence, it was not overly graphic. They don't show you all the detail and blood from all the killings and they are all over quite quickly. However, this leaves it to your imagination and for me, it was not vital for the power of the film. Finally, the film was Canadian which makes a change from the usual popular American films that come out. It had characters with different accents and backgrounds as well which makes it culturally diverse and of unusual quality, but for "Taking Lives" it all worked and added to the excellence of the film.

In conclusion, the film "Taking Lives" does conform to many of the forms and conventions of a thriller but it does it in a very exciting and unique way. In my opinion, it was a great film and i haven't seen one like it before. All the details were crisp and precise and i think it does deserve to be more well-known than it is. It also includes details that aren't typical of the genre which makes it different, interesting to watch and proves that it didn't need these forms to make it a great thriller.

Location Scouting

Following some prior planning for our thriller opening, we ventured to the nearby cornfields to ensure we could make the sequence of camera angles work without showing the housing estate. We chose to shoot in the cornfelds as when it is not so bright as it was on this day, it can be a fairly dark and creepy place. What started out as a meer location scout turned out to be a short walk through of the first possible shots.


The first shot is a long shot of the alley that leads to the fields. Our victim would walk up and once they have passed the camera, the silhouette of our mysterious killer would appear at the other end.

We would then follow the victim walking across the field with a variety of shots to keep it interesting. They would noticeably be getting more and more suspicious and anxious of their surroundings.
How this shot works, and well, is yet to be worked out. But the basic idea was that the victim and the camera stop and the camera turns 180 to follow what she is seeing over her shoulder. Before this turn, her attacker has suddenly appeared under the tree, possibly in silhouette again to keep them anonymous. At this point, the music would become more panicked and dramatic to match the tension in the shots.

Following this, we would then have fast shots of the victim approaching the tree, unaware of what awaits her.

And then, the attacker preparing their weapon (shown amazingly here with invisible rope.)

As the victim grows nearer, the cuts would quicken...

An anonymous, dark shot of the killer which couldn't be acheived on this run through due to the unusually bright day.

Finally, after the murder had been comitted (a part we didn't run through), we would go to a long shot of the field to commence our next scene in which the body is discovered. It would begin from the same distance and angle but at a different time of day so that the audience are aware of the differing scenes.

UNFORTUNATELY: After taking these pictures, the cornfields were ploughed in all their entirety which left us with mud. So we were forced to relocate our scene somewhere else: Cannock Chase. At this point, we have also come to the decision that a voiceover or character narrative would start off the opening scene well.