MS: Thriller Film Opening - Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010)

Shutter Island is a neo-noir/thriller movie which depicts Edward “Teddy” Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) as our protagonist. The storyline positions the audience with him but learn very little about him as he is flown to a distant island. We do learn however that he is a US Marshal, travelling to a mental health institute on an island to research a case of a missing person, along with his counterpart Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo).

The camera angles almost always show him as being below the doctors, but level with the other patients depicting the fact that he is equal to the other mental patients, setting up for the following parts of the film. When he is first seen from inside the asylum Chuck comes to sit next to him as he sits on the steps of the main entrance. The are level in mid-shot and are percieved as being equal.

There is a slow pace of editing to increase the camera prevalence of  Teddy. Many of the scenes involve motivated cuts to show the passage of time between getting of the helicopter and arriving at the intitute. Each scene segues into the next slowly however and does not impose any threat as opposed to other thriller films where jump cuts and motivated cuts are made to express fear.

The sound used is based around live sound and dialogue, the additional discourdant music and bird-song sound effects increase the feeling of anticipation and tention for the first scene of the film.