Research - Mrs Quinlan: Mise en scene: Body language and facial expression

Body language and facial expression 

In this post i will be talking about body language and facial expression. Body language is a way of showing people how you feel to others by the expression of body movements and facial expression is a way expressing of your emotions on a persons face. its important to use it in films since it body language and facial expressions can show feelings from the character. this is helpful murder scenes or scenes where the characters is running away from something or someone running.

Below is some example of what body languages and facial expressions that a characters in a stereotypical would used in the thriller genre.

Victim

A stereotypical victim in a thriller would use various different body language and facial expression when confronting the antagonist. If they are trying to stand up to them their faces look angry. The use of the body language shows that they want to lash out on the antagonist. However if they are running away from the antagonist their body language is more difficult an example of this would be their hairs might be standing on end and they may have the facial expression of scared or panicking. A protagonist body language may have had a been also a scared however unlike the victim he might have confident facial expression.

Protagonist

A Stereotypical Protagonist would their body language during most scenes would be relaxed their body language looks.  However, the scene is tenser the protagonist body language and facial expressions would change. They would look confident in some sub-genres or their face would be more concerned or confused because of the situation they are facing.

Antagonist

A stereotypical antagonist may have an would have been the person some who had a confident or even over confident facial expression who was prepared on what he or she was doing. This includes that she was prepared for an outcome whatever happening. This meant that she would have used various body language when they did what they did moreover the antagonist would try to cover up what they did when they meet other characters, Antagonist may look sympathetic to other characters and this may include crying and the purpose of this is to confuse the audience and other characters within the thriller.

Scene analysis 

Psycho Both victim and protagonist. 

As we can see with this clip the victim was scared when she first saw the antagonist and was in pain because she was being stabbed in the face the use of different camera angles of her faces show her cant bearing the pain. The aftermath of the attack and that she knew she was going to die and her body language is that she is given up since she was been left for dead and her facial expression was she was in shock. 

The antagonist in this clip was harder to analyse since the director didn't show the face of the antagonist, however, its quite clear from the body language that intent was to try an kill the victim. And was trying to get the job done as quickly as possible.

Conclusion: what types of body language and facial expressions are you now planning to use for your characters and why?

Thrillers can use various different body language and facial expression to try to express a range of different emotions during different situations. For my thriller, I need to show various facial language and body languages to show the characters reactions to certain events in the narrative. I'm planning to use aggressive language for the antagonist since they would show the intent of what the antagonist is planning. Some of the body language I'm planning to use may be subtle however the audience should be able to pick up what emotions are being conveyed throughout that scene.