Brick (Johnson,USA,2005)

Titles and Title Font: the title is a plain white on black design. This tells us nothing of what is to come in the movie. The colours are used to stand out and make a contrast,which could give the impression that something later on in the movie will contrast or will be different. The title does not really raise any questions as it has not enough information to make the audience question it. Visually it is very bland but also stands out by its contrasting colours.

Set: The set is an average suburban American town and high school. This makes the action seem more intriguing as it is happening in a place that could be very similar to where the audience live. Also it shows the theme of a thriller as a lot of successful thrillers take the ordinary and suddenly add the unexpected to create questions and suspense. the starting scene is in a drainage ditch, a dark place out of the way of anyone who would usually go by, making it a perfect place to leave a body. this also sets the film up as the audiance wait for the main charecters to find this place and so for the girl to die.


Characters: We are introduced to a boy and are shown glimpses of a girl who is dead as the film starts. By rewinding to when she was alive we ask questions about her like how she wound up dead. We also question how the pair know each other and why she trusts him so much. The fact that the girl is hardly seen makes her seem mysterious and dangerous as we know nothing about how she looks or what she is like as you only visually see glimpses of part of her body like her arm or her hair, and you do not get the impression of how she is in a personal capacity. Although we see more of the boy we do not know much about him as little information has been fed to us.

Costume: the bright blue plastic bangles the girl wears show that she is still quite young and wants to show off how fashionable she is and how she wants to be having fun. This concept makes her death ironic as she wanted a good time and ended up dying. We as an audience want to know how her death occurred and why she did not know why she was going to die. The boy's costume is ordinary and gives no clues if he is involved in her death.

Story: By viewing this opening sequence we know that the girl ends up dying so the story the audience wants to learn about is how her death is brought about. This makes us ask various questions like "was the boy something to do with her death? What does the title have to do with her death? Does anything happen that could avoid the set ending? We are fed clues such as her conversation with the boy about some mysterious things for example the brick. We do not know what these things are - if they are items or code names for something else and so the audience is given a sense of unease and begin to question what is going on. The conversation had started off being portrayed as something quite sinister as the girl is having trouble speaking about what she needs to tell the boy

Genre: We can tell this is a thriller as it makes us as an audience question what we see on screen. Showing the ending before the film starts is a technique used by thrillers to let the audience know whats going to happen so we don't focus on guessing the ending but on guessing the means and hows.