Thriller conventions

Research and Planning: Thriller Conventions

Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film and television that includes numerous and often overlapping sub-genres. Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villains. "In an Anglo-Saxon thriller, the villain is generally punished, and the strong silent man generally wins the weak babbling girl. We always hope that the wicked but romantic fellow will escape scot-free and the good but dull chap will be finally snubbed by the moody hero.

Literary devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliffhangers are used extensively. "Homer's Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in the Western world and is regarded as an early prototype of the thriller." A thriller is villain driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles the hero must overcome. The genre is a fascinatingly flexible form that can undermine audience complacency through a dramatic rendering of psychological, social, familial and political tensions and encourages sheltered but sensation-hungry audiences.

Thriller : Thrillers are essentially about the battle of justice vs. injustice where often there is a price to be paid for the conclusion of the story. A thriller is a film of suspense with a plot structure that reinforces the elements of gamesmanship and the chase. Thrillers can be spy based, tales of geopolitical crisis, legal thrillers, medical thrillers or domestic thrillers. Commonly thrillers progress with a growing sense of threat or danger and the excitement of pursuit.

Narrative of Thrillers

Thriller films are normally shown from two charachter points of view. The first being that of the protagonist, which involves the audience more in events and creates empathy for the character. Or the story is occasionaly told from the view of the villain, which can lead to empathy for the villain also at their twisted understanding or peraps disturbiing past that has led to the present. Although it can also create a sense of guilt. Lastly thought the story can aslo be told from the point of view of an onlooker, detatching the audinece from events so they perhaps are more observant.
Events in the story line enable the film to progress, and allow the audience to second guess what will happen next. In many films this will be wrong so adds to suspense.
The dialogue in thrillers never contains a complete explanation of events or plot, to give it pace, and maintain the mystery, which is essential in building up suspense.

Conventions of Thrillers

Setting: Can be urban, isolated suburban settings, cities or quiet country villages.
Mise-en-scene: Normally dim lighting hiding parts to a character, large threatening weapons for props e.g. large knives, guns etc. Camera shots are normally point of view shots, frames within frames, or close ups. Often there is also alot of camera movement. To signify different emotions colours are used like red connates blood or danger, blue cold mystery or death.

Characters:

Dress Code: Commonly characters appear smartly and well dressed with dark colours in spy based thrillers eg: James Bond. However dress codes differ depending on the context of the plot, for example in Running scared, the protagonist Joey Gazelle is not smartly dressed, but is casualy dressed, in non expensive clothing. Similar to dress codes for an action thriller like Die Hard for which Bruce Willis wears casual, masculine clothing, which helps empower his characters appearance. Gangster thrillers almost always have sharp, smart suits. Where as dress codes for Slasher thrillers especially for female characters is sexy, or revealing.

Character Parts: Often in thriller films, there is one charachter who plays the role of a helpless innocent female in need of rescue, the damsel in distress. Who does however become brave when her help is needed and often aids or saves the male hero/protagonist. There is therefore normally a male hero who battles the injustice and ultimately aims to defeat the residing evil of the situation to allow good to prosper. The residing evil in thriller films can be a vast majority of characters from a monster to a twisted boy next door. There are however some common characteristics which include, revenge, anger, or a skewed view on events, as well as distorted social skills and understanding.

Music: Is used to build tension and fear to keep the audience on "the edge of their seats" it will usually follow the main character or villain like a theme for them so the audience know when that certain character is around, or about to appear. A deep slow pace of music will mostly likely to be used to reflect the mood, a certain type of music will repeat throughout the film to make the audience aware of when something is about to happen, such as someone being killed.