Conventions of a Thriller – The Bourne Identity

The sound of rain pouring down starts from the very beginning of the film even as the Universal logo is being shown. This then progresses into thunder and lightning and as each lightning strike sparks the screen flashes accordingly showing a glimpse of a body floating in the sea in darkness. The cue for non-diegetic music is now as a very calm but somehow haunting music creeps its way into the background. The same music is played at various points through the film to help continue the theme creating tension and suspension for the audience. Cross cutting is used to switch between the body and a group of fisherman playing cards on a boat.  Both shots here are in very low-level lighting, which is a main convention of thrillers to form an eerie atmosphere. Diegetic sounds such as chains rattling and footsteps are also used when Bourne is climbing down a ladder on the edge of the US embassy as well as gunshots later on. These are all typical sounds of a thriller film. 

Unusually the films location and setting changes a lot which isn’t very conventional for a thriller. There are often a lot of people around the two main characters (Jason Bourne and Marie Kreutz), which you wouldn’t expect for this genre of film. There are a lot of close-up and mid shots used to constantly show emotion and show a point of view.  My personal favourite use of quick-cut editing in this film is the fight scenes. Several different camera angles and shots are used to record these and the fast switching between them provides a very tense atmosphere and a real sense of action but also emergency. Although including several action scenes, the film additionally has a great deal of dialect that is very stern, serious and straight to the point but this of course is to be expected of a thriller.