Movie Convention Research: Bird Box

The second movie researched was Bird Box. This movie can be watched on Netflix.

The camera angles and movements in thriller movies seem to be similar so we highlighted the important ones that added the thriller to the movie. One of the directors mentions that her favorite shot to use throughout the film was close-ups. She states that she wants viewers to “understand what’s going on in those eyes and cultivate it.” An important scene in the movie is the speech to the children, where an extreme close-up that ultimately ends up in a behind-the-shoulder shot is used. During the speech, viewers are confused as to why Sandra is so paranoid and as the close-up of her turns into a behind-the-shoulder shot we see that she is talking to children which intrigues the viewers even more. Tracking shots are predominantly used because we are watching the actors navigate the town and trying to escape simultaneously. We follow the actors and witness firsthand how they get through the obstacles presented in the settings they are in. It is a key factor that helps add to the suspense because it makes viewers feel as if they are traveling alongside them. These were two of the most used shots in the movie which my group will definitely incorporate into our final project.

For the mis-en-scene, the main part of every character’s costume/outfit was the blindfolds that they wore to protect themselves from the entities around them. The main character Malorie Hayes wears a knife loop, which is a significant prop for her costume. In the movie, Malorie is constantly trying to survive from the dark entity, and so this knife loop symbolizes her efforts of protecting her children. This movie takes place in Northern California, surrounded by a forest and river which add to the isolated effect that the movie tries to portray due to the high suicide rates. The characters are all worried and trying to survive these entities so they are distrustful towards each other because they have become paranoid.

The film follows the character Malorie Hayes,  as she tries to protect herself and two children from entities that cause people who look at them to die by suicide. The sounds commonly heard throughout the movie were whispering and monster noises. The whispering creates an eery feel because the purpose of these whispers was to get into the victim’s head and convince them to kill themself. The supervisor sound/editors talk about the process for making the monster noises and inform viewers that it was a combination of things. The movement of the creatures was the sound of a swarm of bees because the editors wanted the characters to “feel that they were moving around us, like a constant threat that was surrounding us.” The sounds editors emphasized the idea that the whispers could be in time and flow together to heighten the creepiness as well as support the feeling that they surrounded characters by their presence at all times. We can definitely do something similar to the whispers because it was a really important aspect of the movie that made things more suspenseful and creepy.