AS Level media studies-Foundation production evaluation-Question 1

What is a thriller?

A thriller is a book or film which is designed to keep the reader or viewer on edge with suspenseful and sensational action. Thrillers have also been produced in the radio, theatre, and television media. This genre is incredibly large, and thrillers often overlap with pieces of work produced in other genres; mysteries, for example, are often thrillers. Many people find thrillers very enjoyable, and they appreciate the fast pacing and complex plots associated with this genre.

Thrillers typically involve sudden plot twists and lots of red herrings, for example, keeping people unsure about what is going to happen, this suspense can get almost unbearable, especially in a long piece or a television series. Thrillers also have a lot of action which is often chaotic and they typically feature resourceful heroes and exotic settings.

In some thrillers the plot can vary dramatically, an example of this could be a supernatural, scientific or medical in nature, forcing their protagonists to contend with biological agents or mysterious scientific happenings. Some are simply straight mysteries with clever, horrific, or intriguing antagonists, while others be focused on the inner workings of the legal system, environmental threats, technology, or natural disasters.

Thriller sub genres

Techno thriller, techno thrillers look into the manipulation of sophisticated technology playing a prominent part in taking over the world and giving the new world order where mankind is overrun by robots. This particular subgenre is mainly based on fictional speculations on life that tend to follow a science fiction trend. Common themes linked in with this sub-genre are world wars, action and science fictional occurrences like aliens taking over with new technologies.   

Crime thriller, crime thrillers often focus more on the criminals and their activities leading up to the crime or starting at the end of the film and working backwards to show you how it all started and how the villain got into the position that her or she was in, crime thrillers usually emphasise action over psychology aspects although there is also a psychological part to this genre as well,  the crime genre usually includes killers & murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, heists and double crosses.  

Mystery thriller, mystery thrillers focus mostly on the efforts of the detective or private investigator in order to solve the mystery, this sub-genre looks at circumstances of the mystery or crime its self to try and figure out what the clues are, the audiences usually trying to take part in trying to uncover the crime, mystery thrillers also have the audience follow the protagonist as they are trying to find out what is going on and try to guess what happens before the protagonist does.  

Psychological thriller, psychological thrillers play with the audiences minds and produces suspense in film because it reflects the main characters conflict being mental and emotional. It shows the mentality of a character and thought processes that they go through which makes the sub-genre so suspenseful

Disaster thriller, disaster thrillers follow a certain group of people or personal survival in conflict with natural or artificial disasters like floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes. Many disaster films have also had causes of human activity that has brought man kind to the brink of extinction, this type of genre plays with what the future is going to bring for mankind if such disasters were to happen.  

Political thriller, political thrillers look into the stability of the government and the reliance on a hero or heroine who must ensure that stability of the government that employs him or her in order to prevent a bad things happening, commonly used scenarios are the US presidential elections and the preventions of world wars occurring.

Religious thriller, religious thrillers usually unravel the good and the bad points about religion in particular the catholic beliefs, this connoting the good and how it overcomes the bad in films, through a quest to finding out the truth.

The expectations of a mystery thriller are some sort of mystery, which provides a reason for a chase scene e.g. in taken when the Brian Mills (played by Liam Neeson) goes on the chase to find his daughter and free her from a terrible fate, these kind of scenes are normally done in iconic locations such as the streets of Paris or in the Pyramids.

Mystery thrillers also tend to have lots of fact nice looking cars which 9 times out of 10 will normally be trashed by the end of the chase.

Characters - can be a more athletic especially the main lead (like Jason Bourne) but the hero may be a more brainy character rather than straight action it’s got a faster pace than other thriller subgenres and it can almost be described as a ticking clock as we as the audience or the hero in the film is almost waiting for the next crime to happen as we can see it on the horizon.

Conventions

The conventions of a thriller film include low levels of:

Lighting, low lighting is created by using the key and backlights, used together. They produce a sharp contrast between lights and dark areas on screen. This creates distinct and deep shadows which is often a common technique used within thriller and horror films as they create sinister and dark tones. For example in Shutter Island when they enter the institute the lighting goes quite low which shows that they have entered a dark place where bad things may happen on the horizon    

Quick cuts, Thrillers often use quick cuts to create tension and quicken the pace. A good example of this is seen in the thriller Psycho when the woman is murdered in the shower.

Changes in camera angle, things that seem to be quite common are the low levels of framing and the high angles at certain points, the high angle is used mainly to show those powerful positions but they might also in films such as the terminator 2, with the arrival of the terminator, this shows the terminator having control and the most power.   

Tension building music, most of the music in films is non diegetic, some films may even use dialogue instead (this may be to explain a situation that would not be made obvious if there was no music or dialogue what so ever,

Flashbacks, they can provide depth to the character. However, the flashback must be absolutely necessary to the story and not just a way to dump information.

The typical shots used in a thriller film are: high angle shots, (to make the villain look more threatening and the victim look completely powerless many of these are used in the final destination films to emphasise the presence of death and the fact he is constantly watching them) close up shots, (to show expressions these are used a lot also in the final destination films to either show the fear of the unknown or focus on how the person or people has died) canted angle (to show disorientations or the view of someone on the floor looking at something used in psycho when she had been murdered).

The editing in a thriller film is usually very quick and choppy as short choppy scenes add a lot of tension to the scenes E.G. say if the character is in a room with many different objects them camera could go from the eyes to say a book then back to the eyes then the character hears a noise and the camera turns to where the character thinks the noise is coming from. Quick shots are used to emphasise the feelings of suspense and tension, they are mainly used in important parts of the film or thrilling scenes, and they sometimes create a disorientation of space and time by using things like montage editing.

Mise-en-scene

Setting

The normal setting for a thriller film would be somewhere quite dark possibly an old house or an abandoned park or wooded area, this screen grab is from the opening to the hunger games catching fire where they have used an old looking village to emphasise the fact that she may be alone and possibly scared of the unknown.

Costume

The costume is again usually quite dark in a thriller film which can sometimes cause confusion as to who is the hero and who is the villain, this screen grab is from the Bourne ultimatum, if you have never watched this film you would think that Bourne would possibly be the villain as he is wearing very dark clothing, when looking at these clips the things that we took from this section was the dark colours, to achieve this in my own film we used an effect called bleach bypass.

 

Lighting

There is very low lighting in a thriller as a dark setting makes the scene look more tense then a light scene also shadows can make a scene look tense as well this is because many people have a fear of the unknown this is a screen grab from seven and as you can see the lighting is very dark which creates a tense atmosphere as we can only what the person doing the action is doing.

We took ideas from films such as The Lovely Bones, The Blair Witch Project and Orphan, the reasons why the lovely bones inspired us was because it is about a girl who was who was convinced to go with a man who she thought she knew and then she was brutally murdered, the murder went unknown for many years until her sister managed to uncover the truth, the ideas that we took from this film were the murdered girl and the fact of not knowing what was going to happen.

The idea that we took from the Blair Witch Project was the setting, we chose to film in a country area that was quite empty and they filmed in a wooded area which is originally a location that we wanted to use but there was no building that we could use to film the rest of our opening in.

The idea that we took from orphan was the idea of hidden identity as we find out in orphan the main character who is causing a problem for the family is not quite who she says she is, we took the idea of this and applied it to the girl who was found under the blanket, we don’t know who she is, we don’t know how she got there and we don’t know exactly what happened to her and then we see some pictures of a board with what looks like the female that found the body which again created more questions.

We also looked at the openings to these films on YouTube to see if there was anything we could take from them and add it into our own film.

·       The lovely bones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQZq0d1vzOE

·       The Blair Witch Project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdS9DYaiCEE   

         Orphan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgxVIB2WuHU