Shutter Island Notes

Shutter Island (2010), Martin Scorsese, IMDB rating: 8.0/10

Shutter Island (2010)
Dir.: Matrin Scorsese
IMDB rating: 8.0/10
Budget: $80 million
Gross R  $294,803,014 

Set in the 1950's, it features a federal Marshal ( Teddy Daniels) who's been called in to search for a missing patient at the mental facilities on the island. Throughout the film it's shown that he is still mourning the loss of his wife two years ago in a fire, caused by someone who may or may not be on the island. Teddy sees visions and hallucinations of his dead wife as the film goes on and she urges him on through the film, but Teddy soon decides that there is something else afoot on the island and decides to search for what he believes are  disturbing experiments taking place on the island.

The film is a typical psychological Thriller; it features a strong contrast between the light and the dark, often teddy finds himself walking in the darkness of the islands facilities, and his dreams are often done with slight continuity errors in the edits done to intentionally make the viewers think that there is something wrong with the scene and its contents. For example when one character is smoking in the dreams, the smoke flows backwards and in another scene his wife is holding a bottle of whisky which disappears in the next shot. Edits and errors like this take place throughout the film and often to make the viewer feel that there is something wrong. Also the sounds in the film are often pronounced like the dripping of water in the darkness and the screams of the patients in the hospital. The music in the film often takes the form of piano notes, often long and drawn out-  quite jarring and isolated at points for example:





Also the lighting plays a key role in the film for example:

 Teddy is in a dark corridor  that is scarcely lit- he is using matches to navigate his way through the darkness.

Here we have the use of a blue filter, to make the world seem colder that it is to our character, the entire film is from the view of Teddy, so the audience only know what he knows through the film. That is typical of the genre, we only see what the main character sees and this plays into the aspeact of the unreliable narrator.

Also note the use of editing, the jump cuts made during the following dream sequence- to make it appear jarring to the viewer, also watch the qhisky bottle that Teddys wife is holding.

Important Themes in Donnie Darko

• There is a strong theme of paranoia and schizophrenia throughput the film, especially characterized by a central character called Frank, a figment of Donnie's imagination (although this point is debatable, as there are often scenes were Frank materialises in the real world. It conveys the point that the main character is troubled. Another point about Frank is that he only appears in the darkness, adding to the elements of fear and the supernatural and increasing the enigmatic storyline.
• The main character has a very jovial and casual way of speaking, especially as he describes what he's done, eg in therapy; "I flooded the school, and I burned down that pervert's house" and then smiles and laughs. This means that Donnie has serious mental issues, yet he isn't particularly shaken or worried, even by Frank. However, there are scenes where Donnie's mood changes and he becomes extremely upset and distraught with the situation he's in.
• There is a strong chronological theme that ties the plot together. It is set into motion at the beginning when Donnie is told by Frank that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. At frequent points there is a countdown on the screen, giving the viewer a sense that time has passed in the film, and that the end is coming.  
• A strong supernatural theme runs throughout the film, such as the theory of time travel being constantly talked about and related to on many occasions, mainly when Donnie is introduced to it by his teacher at school. Another instance on the supernatural and science-fiction is the way of locating vectors along which people will travel, in essence seeing the future, which is utilised by Donnie near the end of the film. 
• The final point to make is that important themes and points that occur throughout the film are often left extremely unresolved, open and ambiguous. This means that important points such as the aspect of time travel, paranoia, schizophrenia and reality are intentionally left unanswered for the viewer to try and work out for themselves. It is also a clever move by the director as it leaves the viewer wondering, and therefore watching the film again and again to try and unravel the mystery left in the story. 

Donnie Darko on IMDb

Psychological Thriller: An Introduction.

A psychological thriller generally tends to use very snappy cuts, as to keep the viewer in suspense- often leaving the action very unclear as to what happened to create a strong sense of narrative enigma, leaving the audience unclear as to what happened until it is revealed later in the film, another tactic that helps the film maintain its suspense is the use of sound, such as music to create a sense of atmosphere and pro-longed sense of dread that can last for scenes on end but it can be quite passive too. 



Lighting also plays a key role in the way that there is a strong use of shadow and the contrast with light, often masking things. The use of location often ties in strongly with a character and there is a repeated use of stairs and mirrors with the concept of illusion.
 The narrative often places an equal focus on character and on the plot of the film, however quite often the main character is found to be an unreliable narrator. Often the character has a back story that unravels as the film progresses and as such we gain a deeper understanding of the character as the film progresses. Often the character will have a conflict of identity- unsure about who they are or what their purpose is and as the film progresses the film explores the characters mind.

Notable Directors within the Psychological Thriller genre include:

Darren Aronofsky- Who directed Pi (1998) and Requiem for a Dream (2000).


Park Chanwook- The Korean director of the 'Vengance' Trilogy starting with Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002) about a man who is deaf and seeks a way to find his ill sister a new kidney.


Brian De Palma- The Director of Dressed to Kill (1980), notable for its strong use of dreams and mirrors and with strong aspects of a characters sexuality.


David Fincher- The Director of Fight Club (1999) a film about a man who is deeply unhappy with life and seeks a way to change everything around him. 


Mary Harron- She directed the film American Psycho (2000) about a wealthy young businessman, it includes several narrative aspects of the genre such as a first person narrator who is shown to be unreliable as the plot pans out.


Richard Kelly- Donnie Darko (2001), follows all of the conventions and leaves the audience guessing and lets the viewer interprit the ending. 


Stanley Kubrick- Films such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), focus on thecharacters mentality or in this case...lack of it.


David Lynch- Very surrealistic style of film, often the characters and the audience are left to decide what happened, for example Lost Highway (1997).


Martin Scorsese- Directed Shutter Island (2010).

AS Media Film Pitch

The basic idea is that the home is being possessed by some force unseen- much like Amnityville Horror (1979)
Dir: Stuart Rosenberg

We have a quiet suburban house with no one home, everything quiet apart from someone upstairs, the viewer can tell because of some diagetic music heard from upstairs- but apart from that it appears the house is empty and fairly void of life. The camera then goes through several empty hallways to once again establish that no one else is home part from this one person and then finally we have a low angle shot of someone ( a teenage male) on the computer doing drugs and we then hear something falling downstairs such as a pan- the boy turns around and it is the first time we see his face. As he turns his computer screen flickers to show an eye blinking and looking at him and when he turns back around it's gone. He goes to investiage this unusual sound but begins to hear voices in his head saying various things- very quiet and the viewer wondering whether or not it is in his head or not. We have several POV shots from behind the teenager but nothing is ever confirmed to be following him and as he makes his way downstairs a shadow on the wall that looks like a hand seems to be reaching for him. However as he gets into the kitchen things get louder and louder and doors slam shut and it sounds like someone is trashing the house. He enters the kitchen and everything seems perfectly fine but as he turns off the light we hear a lound noise; as he wakes up.

I enjoyed the suburban setting- the feeling that the house is condemned; despite the seeming pleasant exterior. For example the shot above- a seemingly normal house with something dark hidden away inside. 
It makes a good loction for filming because it conveys that normality of a typical suburban middle class housing estate. For this reason it would make a great estblishing shot

I'd use a camera shot much like this because it conveys the aspect of binary opposition- a sense that there might be something else in the shot that the viewer cannot see.

Possible AS Film Opening Titles

• Discord
• Schism
• Dissension 
• Acid, blotter, cheer, dots, drop, flash, hawk, L, lightning flash, liquid acid, Lucy, micro dots and other names for LSD, as the hallucinogenic is a main part of the storyline.
• Fissure
• Rift
• Disunity
• Partition

• The names that aren't related to drugs are all synonyms of the word 'split'. They are used because a split is what happens in the storyline, as the main character is separated, or split from reality through drug use.  

Edits to preliminary task

After our initial edit, we were given tasks to do and pointers about editing our film to make it more continuous:

• Start 3rd shot later - edit so there's no pauses/jumping
• Don't show victim or/and face of villain
• Close up of villain showing identity
• 4th shot earlier
• Edit 6h shot - no pauses
• Sound quality needs improving
• Camera should be steadier, not shaky
• Cut part of walking scene
• No panning - should be over shoulder
• Instead of two-shot, use high angle
• Close up of fire extinguisher
• No 'time traveling'
• Following chair being pushed away
• Sound effect of hit, skull being smashed

My Pre-lim task

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door  and crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. 


Match-on action: A match on action, a technique used in film editing, is a cut that connects two different views of the same action at the same moment in the movement. By carefully matching the movement across the two shots, filmmakers make it seem that the motion continues uninterrupted.


Shot/reverse shot: Shot reverse shot is a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.


180-degree rule: The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line.