Would audiences believe a 'man screamer' in a thriller?

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harmonica44

In the clip you if you fast forward 15:35 into the clip, please. Thanks.

As you can see the woman gets really freaked out and screams at a high pitch while covering her face in horror. If a male character acted like that in a thriller I'm writing, would the audience be scared for him the same way, or will it just come off as laughable, even if well acted and directed?
 
Hey where is the clip?

I like that many of your posts have to do with believability. That's a great thing to check with others for in advance, rather than to realzie wow why did I do that!

Is the man screaming the main character? If it's a side character, then yes it can work as lots of horror movies have "man screamers." I would like to see the clip to see the kind of scream you mean? Is it all out terror or a surprised higher scream?
 
Hey harmonica44! Send us the clip :)

I signed this forum a few days ago, and it's been wonderful to see that people communicate and try to help and given a constructed opinion.
 
It could provide a bit of tension relief. But it will be seen as funny, unless you just make it super grizzly and tragic.
 
It depends on how he does it. It could be extremely funny or frightening. Most men don't scream when they get frightened. They usually jump and say things like WTF or Holy Shit. But, it really all depends on how it's shot, what comes before and delivery.
 
harmonica44 said:
As you can see the woman gets really freaked out and screams at a high pitch while covering her face in horror. If a male character acted like that in a thriller I'm writing, would the audience be scared for him the same way, or will it just come off as laughable, even if well acted and directed?
Click to expand...
I think if done well, that could be really scary. Like the car scene after the opening credits of Reservoir Dogs.
 
From personal experience, I know that masculine men, when confronted with some things in the dark, 6' under the ground in a pit with nothing but a Coleman LED lantern for illumination will let lose a "high pitched war cry"... hey, it was a brown recluse -- and I killed it... no one heard the screa.... I mean, war cry.
 
harmonica44 said:
As you can see the woman gets really freaked out and screams at a high pitch while covering her face in horror. If a male character acted like that in a thriller I'm writing, would the audience be scared for him the same way, or will it just come off as laughable, even if well acted and directed?
Click to expand...

The answer is, it depends. How it's interpreted by the audience will depend on whether or not this behaviour is a believable response of the character to the situation. If it's not believable then it will not create the audience response you are looking for, unless of course you want to create incredulity. For example, that behaviour would be more believable in a character with a personality like Liberace than it would be in a character with a personality like Vinnie Jones. You could still make it work with a character more like Vinnie Jones but you'd have to very carefully create a scenario extreme enough to make such uncharacteristic behaviour believable.

Of course, all this needs to be carefully set up in the script, directed and acted well in production and then edited well in post. The sonic characteristics of the scream is also going to play a significant role in it's believability. In short you have to ask yourself, would a character with this personality respond to the situation in this way or, to come at it from the other angle, what situation is required to make this response from this character believable? No one else can really answer your original question, without knowing a great deal more about the personality of character, the situation the character is in and the quality of the acting, editing, etc.

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