Thriller Genre

Thriller Genre

We did some research on the Genre that we have chosen so we can get a good idea of what should be involved in our project.This is what we have found:

Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, and television programming that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements. Thrillers heavily stimulate the viewer's moods giving them a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and/or terror. Thriller films tend to be adrenaline-rushing, gritty, rousing and fast-paced. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists and cliff-hangers are used extensively. A thriller is a villain-driven plot, whereby he or she presents obstacles that the protagonist must overcome.

The aim for thrillers is to keep the audience alert and on the edge of their seats. The protagonist in these films is set against a problem– an escape, a mission, or a mystery. No matter what sub-genre a thriller film falls into, it will emphasize the danger that the protagonist faces. The tension with the main problem is built on throughout the film and leads to a highly stressful climax. The cover-up of important information from the viewer, and fight and chase scenes are common methods in all of the thriller sub genres  although each sub genre has its own unique characteristics and methods. A thriller provides the sudden rush of emotions, excitement, sense of suspense and exhilaration that drive the narrative, sometimes subtly with peaks and lulls, sometimes at a constant, breakneck pace thrills. In this genre, the objective is to deliver a story with sustained tension, surprise, and a constant sense of impending doom. It keeps the audience cliff-hanging at the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax. Thrillers tend to be fast-moving, psychological and threatening, mysterious and at times involve larger-scale villainy such as espionage, terrorism and conspiracy.

Thriller is a genre that can have a mixture with either the genres mystery or crime. Thriller often overlap with each other. Thrillers are usually fiction-based and fast in pace, while crime has a more calm pace and is dramatic and realistic. A few common methods and themes in these type of genres are mainly ransoms, captivities, heists, revenge and kidnappings. These are the methods that involve a lot more thriller to it.

When applied to the cinema, mis-en-scene refers to everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement. The “mise-en-scène”, along with the cinematography and editing of a film, influence the verisimilitude of a film in the eyes of its viewers. The various elements of design help express a film’s vision by generating a sense of time and space, as well as setting a mood, and sometimes suggesting a character’s state of mind. Mis-en-scene is important in every genre. To make a film you have to think of the destinations of where it will take place, the costumes, props and the actors. You have a storyboard which shows how the film is going to pan out. In that storyboard, you will need to pick out the actors that will match your description, the props you will use and the different destinations that you need for each scene. For example, for a thriller based film, the main destinations that you will find is alley ways and areas with a dark light to it. It is mostly based at night time as well.

The pace of the shots and scenes are important too as they can express what is happening. In thriller, the pace and speed of the shots are mostly fast and this is done to show the rush in the film and the trailer. If the spee dof the scenes were slow then that could mean that there is a lot of focus and concentration. It could also meant hat the chase or whatever the plot of the film is has slowed down. One way that the editers speed up there scenes is by having a straight cut on the end of each scene and not a fade. Doing this makes it seem faster and non-stop because the straight cut doesnt last for more than a second.

An example of an action thriller based film is The Fugitive and Bourne Legacy. These are two good examples of thriller because it shows a lot of popular mis-en-scene, sound and editing. On The Fugitive, it is to do with a fugitive who has been wrongly accused of a murder and is being chased down by the police after he escaped from a prison bus. To stand out the genre, they used alley ways and they set the day to night time. These are common in a thriller as they make it more tense to the audience. Also what they have used is dirty clothes and have made the actor in the film look rough like he has been through a lot. For Bourne Legacy, once again it is to do with a chase. This states that the majority of thriller based films are to do with a chase. In this film, they have used mis-en-scene such as alley ways, long dark roads and have set the daytime to night for most of the film. What both of these films also have in common is how the shots and scenes have been made. Each have fast scenes and cuts which shows that everything is happening in a heartbeat. They use straight cuts which helps to show that the chase is still happening. These two films represent how thriller genres are. Overall it is stating that thriller films are fast and not straight to the point. Everything happens mostly at the end of the film and the rest of the film is the build up to it.

The film trailer that we are making for our project relates to this specified genre. Our main genre is thriller but we have also included action which makes it an action thriller film. We have made sure that throughout the trailer, thriller is represented the most. In the thriller side we have included the build up to the main point of the film which is where the action lays. This film is all about three people who were wrongly accused of a crime and this is where it gets tense and where everything is questioned till the end. A point of a thriller is to get the audience to keep on thinking and questioning which is what we have aimed to do for our film. We have left cliffhangers throughout in the middle and at the end. In the film trailer it shows that there is a chase and from most of my research, this is done in most thriller based films. The police are chasing the three wrongly accused prisoners who escaped from a train. Also from most of the research I did it had shown that when it builds up to soemthing, the end product involves all the action and we have done this to our trailer too.