Film: The suspect
Genre: Short murder mystery
The Suspect follows the story of two detectives who attempt to solve the murder case of a young woman.
The short film begins with a series of shots in different angles, all showing a young woman jogging in an isolated forest. These shots are presented using fast paced editing, which immediately build tension for the audience. However, the building of tension is juxtaposed by the scene taking place in daylight, but the tension is reinforced through the use of a tracking shot to follow the woman as she is jogging, which highlights her isolation in the forest and may connote to the idea that the woman is oblivious to the upcoming danger. Secondly, isolation is a convention of the horror genre as well as the mystery genre, which supports Nicholas Abercrombie’s idea that “boundaries between genre are shifting and becoming more permeable”, which means that different genres can share the same or similar codes and conventions. Furthermore, camera is also used in a way to dramatize the murder scene of the young woman because, suddenly from the tracking shot of the young woman’s back a short reverse shot is used to show a masked man jump in front of the victim holding a gun at face point. This type of shot is interesting, because it is very revealing of the details of murder scene, which often in mystery films are kept hidden until the end. For instance, the audience clearly sees that the masked person is male and clearly see how long the murderer holds the gun at her face before shooting her, which are conventionally not revealed until the end of most mystery films. As a result, this speeds up the murder scene unconventionally using fast paced editing and may connote to the idea that human life is a lot more fragile and shorter than we think. Perhaps, this may connote that the murder is not important but the narrative after the murder is important.
A sound bridge is used as a transition to move from the murder scene in the forest to a pub, where two male detectives are discussing the murder of the young woman in the forest. This sound bridge, moves the narrative of the film to a tension filled and distressed scene to a more serious and formal scene. This scene is the longest of all scenes in the short movie and throughout ambient sound of cups and tables being moved can be heard as well as dialogue from both detectives can be heard. In this point, slow paced editing is used, to almost reduce tension and bring about tranquility, but this may actually connote to the idea that the detectives are attempting to rationally think about the murder and how to solve it, instead of allowing emotion (such as grief) to interrupt their work. This may highlight and connote patriarchy in society, as it is the men who are represented as wise and sensible, because they professionally dressed (wearing black suits), in white collar professions, while the young woman is represented as being irresponsible and weak for jogging in a forest on her won, because she is the person who dies by the hand of a man, thus reaffirming the subordination of women in society due to patriarchy.
From this short movie, I think I will pull out the idea of using a tracking shot to build tension, because in this short movie that tracking of the woman did effectively build anxiety and tension.
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