Q1
A thriller is a genre of media that can be music, film,
television etc. A thriller is something that people watch and it has common
conventions that audiences expect to see when they watch it. The main elements that
are in the thriller genre are suspense, action, excitement and most heavily
rely on changing the mood of the audience to suit what they want them to and
how they want them to feel. They mostly consist of high level action and
intensity and they aim to keep the audience on the edge of their seats
throughout the film. Thrillers often consist of having a male or female
protagonist that is the centre of the action and in most of the scenes. There
is also usually a villain or a few villains that work in a group. Often they
create dramatic tension and suspense by hiding the identity of the main
villains so that you don’t know who they are until near the end of the film as
they are often the least expected character which makes the audience shocked
and keeps them interested in the film.
There are lots of thriller sub-genres including action
thrillers which include a lot of gun fights, car chases and high intensity
action that keeps the audience engaged and interest in the film. This sub-genre
includes a lot of fast editing cuts so that you don’t have the same scene for
very long before cutting to a new scene. They do this so that the audience
don’t lose interest and they can’t see lots of action at one time, they get to
see the fight or chase from different angles and places. A good example of an action thriller is taken.
Psychological is another sub-genre of thrillers and this
includes a lot of mystery and it plays with the audiences emotional minds and
emotional states. It relies on the audience being mature enough to process the
information needed to understand what we had to do. The reason we didn’t pick
this for our thriller is because they’re targeted at people aged over 21 so we
wanted to target ours at people aged 15+ so that would get rid of a proportion
of our audience. A good example of a psychological thriller is Seven.
We chose not to use
this as the main subgenre but as a mini genre within the film as the audience
asked for mystery and we wanted to keep them engaged in the film by adding more
than just action into the film as that could get boring and repetitive after a
while.
The action thriller genre usually consists of an ongoing
battle between the protagonist and the antagonist, this is usually because of
the actions of the antagonist early on in the film. This then triggers a series
of events and actions that are caused by the protagonist which cause suspense
and action which then angers the antagonist. All of these previous actions are
usually done to a member of the protagonist’s family or a good friend of theirs
so that makes them more angry and it makes them want to get revenge on them by
having a large battle at the end of the film in which the antagonist usually
loses which results in them dying or being put in prison for life. The typical
shot types that are used in thriller films are long shots, close up, mid-shots,
over the shoulder shots, pans, low angle and high angle. Each of these shots
has a different meaning, close ups are used to show emotion of a certain
character, mid shots show costume and setting, long shots show location and
groups of characters. 
Close ups let the audience to identity one single character
or an item that has relevance and importance to the film, it lets you see
facial features of a character so that you feel like you know them better and
it makes it easier for the audience to identity characters. This is a close up
from the film dark knight, it shows a close up of the jokers face, it lets the
audience see all of the facial features of the character and it lets them see
the emotion in his face. The close up was effective for this shot as it was
during an interrogation so tension would be high which means that a close up
would allow all of the emotion from the character to be seen.
Mid-shots are mainly used in moments of action and in moments
where there are a few characters in a room discussing something or organising
what they will do next, using a mid-shot lets the audience see the location
that they are in but there are often not enough people or space to do a long
shot and doing close up wouldn’t let the audience get into the film as much and
it wouldn’t engage the audience enough. This is a mid-shot from the film
Sherlock Holmes, this is an effective mid shot as it shows Sherlock Holmes as
he is in a fight. It lets the audience see more of the character than a close
up, also it shows some setting around the character so that the audience know
where they are, it lets the audience see the costume of the character and the
surrounding characters.
Low angle shots are used to show power of a character,
usually used when the villain is introduced as it shows power and makes them
look powerful compared to other character, it makes them seem bigger and taller
like the character and audience have to look up at them. This is a low angle shot, it shows
superiority and the power that one character has over another character, it
makes one of the characters seem like a child because of the angle of the
camera one character can be made to look a lot taller than they really are. The
low angle shot is used effectively here as it makes one character look a lot
taller and more powerful than the character that is lower down.
High angle shots are used to show weakness and are often used
when the main good characters are introduced and it makes them seem small and
weak, the audience and camera are looking down on them so it makes them look
weak and powerless when compared to the bad characters. This is a shot that
shows two characters on their knees, this is a good example of a high angle
shot as it shows two characters which are on their knees so that makes them
seem weaker in the first place and then the high angle shot makes them look
smaller and weaker compared to other characters in the scene. It can make a
tall character look smaller.
Over the shoulder shots are used when characters are having a
conversation and it shows the face of the character that is speaking so that
the audience know who is speaking and it makes it easier to do conversations
rather than just a basic shot of the two characters. This is an over the
shoulder shot and it shows the two characters having a conversation. This shot
allows the audience to see both the characters involved but it only shows the
character that is speaking, then it switches sides to the other character
speaking.
The editing that is used in most thrillers is fast paced and
quick straight cuts mostly, they don’t normally have fades, they sometimes
include fade to black and fade to white, but that is mostly in the sub-genres
action, mystery and crime. They use fast paced editing and a lot of cuts so
that the audience are engaged and they only get to see very small parts of the
film and it gets them more engaged and it makes them want to watch more of the
film. The fast paced editing is used to reflect the speed of the action in the
film.
The
setting is usually very similar however it can differ sometimes, in most action
thriller films the location begins in a city or town like location but then it
often spans over to a larger scale and can move to different parts of the
country or even to other countries. This causes the plot to be spread out over
different places and it means that the audience feel like they are more
involved into the film. The setting used in most thriller films is urban as it
is in cities as oppose to rural setting which is in the countryside.
The costumes are
usually just casual clothing for most of the characters however often when
soldiers are in the film they all wear similar clothing. The main good
character usually wear light coloured clothing which symbolises pureness and
good, it shows that the characters are on the good side as the colour white and
other light colours symbolise being clean and weakness. The villains in action
thriller films usually wear dark coloured clothing which symbolises evil, death
and darkness. Having the good side wear one colour and the dark side wear
another colour makes it easier for the audience to identity which side the
characters are on.
The lighting differs
from dark to light, also they often use a red tint or other colour tint as red
symbolises death, blood and evil. Most normal thrillers use lighting to create
and set the mood for the audience.
Most
thrillers use similar props and depending on the sub-genre, the common props in
thrillers are guns, knives, and various other weapons. They are used by both
the protagonist and the antagonist, they symbolise the action and the intensity
of the scenes. Also a lot of thriller films use fake blood, this is used when
the characters get hit, hurt, stabbed, shot etc.
The sound in action thriller films is mostly non-diegetic
sound, noises like the sound effects of the guns and the explosions, action
films have a lot of added sounds effects as there are some noises that can’t be
made by normal people or things so they have to use sound effects that make it
sound like the sounds are realistic. The diegetic sound in thrillers is mainly
just the dialogue between characters. The other sounds they use are just to
create mood and reflect how the audience are feeling during and after different
scenes.
The
narrative that is used in most thrillers is that there is a constant battle or
dispute between the antagonist and the protagonist, they constantly argue and
usually the controversy is caused by something the protagonist has done at the
start of the film to trigger the events. They show this by using flashback, flashbacks
are very common in thriller films as they show the audience something that has
happened earlier in the narrative without having to start the film at that
location and time. Flashbacks can range from years to show the characters as
children or they can go back only a short time, like a month or less. They
create tension yet they also answer some of the questions that the audience
might have as they let them know some key information.
There were a few thriller openings that inspired us, those
included “Bourne identity,” taken 1”, “lone survivor”, “walking dead series”.
These all inspired us as they are all the same genre and they all have similar
openings, they all have the text over the background and they all use many of
the same conventions that we use. They also influenced us as we used many of
the things that they did in their openings in ours, they helped us to get an
idea of how to do an effective audience as they have the same target audience
as us and they have similar plots as we do.
This
shot from the Bourne identity inspired us to use a similar shot in our
thriller, this is an effective shot as the man with the gun has a close up of
his face so that you can see exactly where they are looking and you can see
that they are pointing their gun at someone or something. Both characters dress
similarly as both are villains in their chosen thrillers. We knew that we could
use this as our thriller has a similar plot to the Bourne identity.
This shot from taken inspired us to do a very similar shot,
it was a very effective shot as it shows that the character is ready to fight
and he is looking around the corner. We used taken as inspiration as it is the
same genre as our thriller and the characters display similar conventions.
This shot from the lone survivor inspired us as it has two of
the soldiers in it, we knew that we needed to include at least one shot which
had a few of the soldiers in it so that the audience could see what multiple
soldiers looked like together. This shot from lone survivor was similar to ours
as we liked the idea but didn’t want to copy it completely.
This shot from the walking dead inspired us as it was the
main character rick running towards a house, we shot a similar scene in our
thriller with the leader of the soldiers and one of the soldiers in shot,
running towards the place where they think the wanted man is hiding.
