Research Into Editing - Miss Gerogiou

Directors of thriller films use editing shots to create a reaction of the audience and to scare them. This editing is also used to create shock, suspense, surprise and tension in the film. 

In the clip i chose from; 'I know what you did last summer' the director uses a variety of different editing techniques to create suspense, surprise, shock and tension. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_gVQrmCMDk&noredirect=1

We first see lots of jump cuts, one after another whilst the girl is sitting on her podium. This creates suspense for the audience as they can infer that the girl is looking through the crowd searching for something or someone. We finally see the jump cut to the mysterious man above where the girl is sitting. This surprises the audience as they did not know such a mysterious man would be spying over her and watching her every move. This creates a relationship between the audience and the girl as they can put themselves in her shoe and empathise with her situation and how petrified she is. This is conventional to a thriller clip as many thrillers do use a cut shot to portray feelings and the view point of the victim but on the other hand they would normally use this shot to quickly put a shot of something scary on the screen to make the audience jump. 

We then see a reverse cut at 0:20 to 0:23 where the girl looks towards the man up on the balcony and we then see the point of view of the man looking back down at her. this creates tension as the audience can see both the Victim and the Killers point of view. This creates suspense and tension as the audience do not know what is going to occur next and they can engage into the film and fell the tension between the two characters. This creates a relationship between the audience and both characters as they put themselves in both their shoes and can engage with both of them. This is conventional to a thriller film as director like to use this to allow the audience to make their conclusion to whom they are going to empathise for. Although thrillers may use this shot to jump from one scary thing to another to scare the audience in quick succession. 

The director finally uses a reaction shot edit at 0:26-0:32 when the killer is peering over her. We first see her face as she is searching for the mysterious man and we can see that she is slightly worried about what she is going to see and what he is going to do. It then cuts to the view from her on him where we can see he is made bigger by the angle of the camera. It then cuts back to her face where we can see she is petrified to what she has seen. This creates a relationship between the audience and the character (girl) as they can see how frightened she is and they can put themselves in her shoes and think about how they'd feel after seeing what she has. This is conventional to thriller films as many directors use this edit to show the victim looking venerable and then cutting to something scaring the victim and making the audience sympathise with her.