Codes and conventions of thriller films...!!!!

Conventions of Thrillers

We wanted to look at the conventions of thrillers so that we could understand what makes a thriller successfull. This would then allow us to apply these to our film.

What gives the variety of thrillers a common ground is hte intensity of emotions they create, particually those of apprehention, exhilartion, excitment and breathlessness all designed to generate that all important thrill.

If a thriller doesn't thrill then its not doing its job!!

What is a thriller???

• uses suspence, tension and excitment as its main elements
• includes many sub genres for example; mystery, crime, psychological, political or paranoid.
• An atmosphere of menace, vilonce, crime and murder
• Society is seen as dark, corrupt and dangerous
• literal devices like plot twists, red herrings and cliff hangers.

Thriller Methods...

• Crime- ransoms, cativitities, heists, revenge, kidnappings
• Mystery- investigations, technique
• psychological- Mind games, psychological themes, stalking, confinement, death traps, horror of personality, obsession 

Thriller Characters

• Criminals, stalkers, assassins, psychotic individuals, escaped cons
• menaced women, innocent victims, private eyes, world weary people
• cops, people involved in twisted relationships

characters are not often black or white, good or bad, they are often grey.

We have chosen to base some of our ideas on these conventions so that our film opening fits the criteria and is easily identifiable as a thriller. We have chosen to use lots of suspension, tension and excitment within our thriller opening, mixing it with the unexpected and unknown. We have decided to include literal devices such as plot twists and cliff hangers. This would keep the audience on edge and ensure that their attention is focused. It also allows people to think for themselves within the opening and try and work out the connections before they are actually unvieled. We have a mixed subgenre of crime and psychological to allow us to have the excitment from the kidnapping and the suspiscion from the twisted plots. we have also thought about the characters in which we used so that we had a innocent, vulnerable girl in which people would altomaticaly associate with being an easy target. We are also going to use a kidnapper in which would force action to the thriller opening.