So it's the first post! and where better to start than at the beginning?! Before we start even coming up for ideas for our thriller opening we need to research existing thrillers to find out about typical narrative and technical conventions, these are basically what the audience will expect to see in a thriller film, and therefore what the makers of the film will need to incorporate in the film.
Firstly when looking into the thriller genre I found that there are a lot of various sub genres of thriller including; legal, spy, action, medical, hostage, police, political, high-tech, crime, psychological and paranoid.
I discovered that unlike horrors, thrillers should make the audience think about the plot and how it will be resolved, the audience has to concentrate at all times to understand whats going on.
After watching clips of some thrillers, and some full movies I found the atmosphere is often menacing throughout and there are many scenes of violence and crime, also society is often seen as corrupt and dangerous.
Literary devices such as plot twists, red herrings and cliff hangers are used to trick the audience and keep them guessing constantly!
Some well known directors of thrillers are; Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubri, Orson Welles, Ridley Scott, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Tony Scott, and John Carpenter.
Inception, Fight Club, Silence of the lambs, Dark knight, The departed and Taken are all good examples of stereotypical thriller films, and they all include many of the codes and conventions highlighted in this post.
Methods or situations often found in thrillers are things like: ransoms, captivities, heists, revenge, kidnappings, investigations, mind games, stalking, deathtraps, and obsession - one of more of these will be found in a conventional thriller, and sometimes the entire storyline will revolve around things like obsession or kidnappings.
Conventional characters in thrillers; criminals, stalkers, assassins, psychotic, escaped cons, menaced women, innocent victims, private eyes, cops and people in twisted relationships. There's also a protagonist and antagonist, however sometimes these characters are more complicated in thrillers, for example in Silence of the lambs the antagonist also helps the protagonists.
Technical conventions:
* Tracking shots
* Reveals (zooming or tracking to reveal significant detail)
* Low key lighting and shadows
* Close-ups (sometimes for concealment of information of anything outside of shot)
* Dramatic angles and framing
* Editing pace changes for climax
* Eerie, tense music, often builds in tempo, volume and pitch to create sense of danger
* POV shots
* Harsh lighting (chiaroscuro and high contrast often used)
* Effects to signify flashbacks, disorientation and dreams
* Use of silence
* Exaggerated sounds
Narrative conventions:
* Enigma codes
* Deadlines
* Complex characters
* Retardation
* Mysterious characters
* Red herrings
* Flashbacks
* Cross cutting
* Plot twists and turns
After researching into the thriller genre, it gives us a much better idea of a plot to come up with for our opening, and the kinds of things we should try to include in our opening. I will continue watching a lot of thrillers to get more ideas and to grasp a better understanding of the genre, and I will be researching a specific director for background information of who comes up with these thrilling films!
Chow! :D
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