Initial ideas for thriller

Psychological thrillers interest me and I'm thinking that I would quite like to explore this subgenre. The characters, plots and locations are less predictable. For example The Stepfather is in someone’s house, yet in Shutter Island it is covered over a whole island. Therefore there’s a whole range of locations.  
What do they have in common?

•  Someone struggling with reality.     
•  Messing with the mind.
•  Character-driven.

According to Hitchock what is the difference between mystery and suspense?

Hitchcock is the master of suspense.
He says that 'mystery is an intellectual process' and 'suspense is an emotional process.' An intellectual process gets you working something out. Whereas an emotional process only happens with you have been given information.

For example: if a bomb goes off in a room it doesn't lead up to any suspense,  yet if they are told in 5 minutes a bomb is going to go off this
creates suspense as they have been given information.

What is genre/subgenre, why is it important (for institutions and audiences)?

What is a genre?
Genre are the codes and conventions.
Conventional means that what you find typical, things that you would expect to find. You can see this when you think about these three aspects:

• CHARACTERS
• LOCATIONS
• PLOT

There are different subgenres in the genre thriller, these are for example:

• Action Thriller
• Conspiracy Thriller
• Crime Thriller
• Disaster Thriller
• Erotic Thriller
• Legal Thrillers
• Medical Thriller
• Psychological Thrillers
• Political Thriller
• Religious Thriller
• Spy Thriller
• Supernatural Thrillers

For each of these you know what what to expect. For example the characters in Supernatural Thrillers could be ghosts, vombies, vampires etc.. and the location could be in dark places, in fields, in haunted houses etc.. and the plot would also be quite predictable. For the audience that likes these kind of films its easy for them to realise that they want to go and see it.


Why are genres important?

• There is an expectation from the audience of what they'll find.
• Genres help the audience choose what they want to see.
• Helps to target the audience.
• Helps market/sell the film.

What is a thriller?

• Something that puts the audience in the position of feeling scared and vulnerable.
• Any film that gives you that heart-beating feeling.
• A film that makes you jump and has an element of danger.

Things they have in common,

• Elements of death
• Make the audience have an emotional response (worried, fearful, excited, tense).

There are differences in these thrillers though,

• Some are thrilling in an action way, some are thrilling in a psychological way.

An action thriller is for example Kill Bill, they are adrienaline packed.
A psychological thriller is for example Shutter Island, Iception, they are playing with the mind.

Here is a list of a few thriller films,

• Shutter Island
• Insidious
• Silence of the Lambs
• The Shining
• Room 1408
• Kill Bill
• Se7en
• Grave Encounters
• Taken

This is the trailer from ‘Shutter Island’. The first clip shown has non-diegetic music that sounds menacing. The clip is of a ship coming forward in the mist, this creates an image of danger and that someone important is coming. At the beginning the clips are edited to fade to black, this makes it jumpy as you don’t know what’s going to come next after the black screen. There is a clip of three of the men walking through the gates to shutter island, it seems important as they are in slow motion and the dialogue is ‘welcome to shutter island’. This indicates that they are here for something very serious and that they are very important characters. Two of the men’s costumes are long brown coats and brown hats; this creates an image of them being detectives. There is a clip in the trailer of an old lady who has blood shot eyes, she doesn’t have much hair, she is quite old, she looks frail, and this creates the image of her having an illness as her pale skin against her blood shot eyes indicates illness. A prop of the woman’s character is handcuffs, this shows that he has just entered into a hospital for the criminally insane. The sound of her whispering ‘shh’ to him shows that she probably has a mental illness as he hasn’t made a sound, with the non-diegetic music stopping shows just how quiet it really is and that she is imagining him making a noise. The dialogue before this moment is ‘we take only the most dangerous and damaged patients’ and by showing her shows just one of the damaged patients, and seeing this women is quite a scary image. DiCaprio is the man actor in this film, one of his pieces of dialogue is ‘its like their scared of something’, he whispers this which creates an eerie effect as they obviously are scared of something but we are unaware of what that is at that moment. There is a clip shown where DiCaprio is asking a woman some questions and she gives him a notepad that has writing in it and at the bottom has the word ‘Run’, to emphasise this they show the word ‘Run’ close up, and the music has a heavy beat when it is close up to that word. This suggests that this is very important and gives them clues. Towards the end the clips get faster together, and shorter, the music tempo also speeds up and makes the climax build up and up and up to the titles being explosive over the screen. Then there’s a silence and a black screen until you see DiCaprio being attacked by a monster from behind him. The camera work for this is that we see him behind bars, and then all of a sudden something appears from behind him very quickly and grabs him.

Here is the trailer of 'The Wave' which is a German film. It is thrilling as it shows clips of a normal school, normal students, being changed by one man. There is a point of view shot of the man looking out onto the playground, this shows the distance from him and the kids on the playground, it also creates a sense of him being alone and having nothing. This clip is a montage of all the clips, I feel this has a more and less gripping sense to it - it may have a less thrilling factor due it not being continuous but also in a sense a more thrilling factor as it is very jumpy and that adds to the thriller as thrillers are meant to make you jump and for you to be on the edge of your seat. There is an over the shoulder shot of the man looking at the classroom - the classroom is empty, but then there is another over the shoulder shot later on in the clip which shows all of the children who have his control (all standing infront of him, looking at him, standing up to him) this is a contrast of him going from nothing, to rise to get such control of so many people. There is a clip of the students marching to him in the classroom, all joking around and him saying that's the power of unity', but we see that one of the boys (the last one we see in the clip, at the back of the room) is taking it quite seriously, this shows that the power of unity is taking him over and he is likely to be dictated. Now it is as if they are his soldiers, and the normal students are no longer individuals in their own clothes saying how dictatorship will 'no way' not happen again, they are now 'together', one body and are now his army. The costumes show that they are no longer individuals as they used to come in colorful home clothes yet now they all wear the same white (neutral) clothes, this shows that they are now all together and have formed their own group. The clips towards the end get shorter and shorter, this builds up the climax of all the clips as we want to know what it leads up to. There is a clip of the students running up the stairs which makes them look like troops as if they are getting ready to go somewhere. They also is a clip of some of the students running round the town putting up posters of 'the wave', which makes them look like a gang, all going round putting out the flyers of their group. This is juxtaposed to a clip of one of the students looking up a gun on the computer, this shows that it has turned to violence. The last clip is of the man looking around nervously, as if he is thinking to himself 'what have I done?', its almost as if he has seen the awful consequence of what he has made happen. The non-diegetic music in this clip sounds like the ocean (which it is meant to as the film is called 'the wave'), this is affective as the ocean takes things in, therefore the students are being sucked in by this man (who is the leader, like the sea). It has drops in the song which are strong and powerful, but then it also has the flowing bits which build up to climaxes. When they are marching in the classroom, the non-diegetic music stops, this makes us able to just hear the marching of them all being together, we get the sense of unity. There was a sound of an almost drum which goes in time with the writing that comes onto the screen, it does this throughout but one that stuck out for me was when it said that 'he became their leader', this shows the power and the force that this man has got. The use of the drill creates an alarming sound and it indicates danger.

Heres the first video that I have embedded into blogger. Its the clip from The Stepfather that I analysed.