When I first decided I was going to produce a thriller film, I thought my main source of useful information was previous highly rated films of a thriller genre, which taught me a lot about typical thriller narratives.
(Above are some images of my research and planning powerpoint into the thriller genre to help me gain a broader understanding)
When I then narrowed down the main conventions of the thriller genre, I conducted a survey to find out what the public most expected from the thriller genre and the most common answer by far was suspense . So this was then my main convention I wanted my narrative to apply to. It however then was difficult to acknowledge what actually caused the feeling of suspense, so I conducted more research on the director Alfred Hitchcock, known as the master of suspense. Watching his films, such as Psycho (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4) and 39 Steps, made me understand that suspense is an emotion caused by the audience knowing something that a character doesn’t. I did this by letting the audience know there is a person in the house without the apposed characters knowing.
Overall the main conventions I used and learnt from real thriller texts, is suspense to create the typical thriller conventions of a sense of danger and having twists and turns in the narrative.I would also think that my media product develops the narrative, of the typical conventions used in real thriller products. I think this because when I did research into the typical thriller audiences, I found that it was mostly males between the ages of 18-25, where as in m film I want to challenge the typical target audience. Then after watching popular thriller films such as Bourne Ultimatum and Vantage point, I realized that this typical restricted audience might be based on the fact that a lot of thrillers do use male characters that are advanced solving the action, which doesn’t relate to most audiences only younger males aspiring to be like the character, hence the thriller target audience. This gave me the idea to have my narrative applying more to woman and the older generation; this meant using characters and situations the audience could relate to. Also I watched a thriller series called 24, which I believe was as popular as it had a wider target audience as more of the audience could relate to the characters. For example in my film using a married couple, gone out for a work do come back home. So overall I think I have developed the typical narrative conventions, so that my thriller film has a wider target audience and I also think having a narrative that the audience can relate too, adds to the conventions of a thriller like character growth. It is also challenged by making the male appear more vulnerable than the female as he is the first to die. In the shot below it shows a point of view shot from the killer looking through the door at Henry. This challenges the stereotype and genre as normally it’s the male who is less vulnerable and is the stronger sex.
Overall the main conventions I used and learnt from real thriller texts, is suspense to create the typical thriller conventions of a sense of danger and having twists and turns in the narrative.I would also think that my media product develops the narrative, of the typical conventions used in real thriller products. I think this because when I did research into the typical thriller audiences, I found that it was mostly males between the ages of 18-25, where as in m film I want to challenge the typical target audience. Then after watching popular thriller films such as Bourne Ultimatum and Vantage point, I realized that this typical restricted audience might be based on the fact that a lot of thrillers do use male characters that are advanced solving the action, which doesn’t relate to most audiences only younger males aspiring to be like the character, hence the thriller target audience. This gave me the idea to have my narrative applying more to woman and the older generation; this meant using characters and situations the audience could relate to. Also I watched a thriller series called 24, which I believe was as popular as it had a wider target audience as more of the audience could relate to the characters. For example in my film using a married couple, gone out for a work do come back home. So overall I think I have developed the typical narrative conventions, so that my thriller film has a wider target audience and I also think having a narrative that the audience can relate too, adds to the conventions of a thriller like character growth. It is also challenged by making the male appear more vulnerable than the female as he is the first to die. In the shot below it shows a point of view shot from the killer looking through the door at Henry. This challenges the stereotype and genre as normally it’s the male who is less vulnerable and is the stronger sex.
Finally I think my thriller challenges the genre in the way that it uses some horror conventions. After doing research into the differences between the two genres, I found that the emotions caused from watching a thriller is based on the narrative and how it builds suspense and the emotions caused from horror are based on what you see visually such as death and gore and abnormal characters. Knowing this I wanted my thriller film to be a thriller as that’s what I’d used for all my research. I deliberately ended my thriller opening before the audience saw any scary visual shots as I wanted my opening to mainly convey suspense. However if my thriller continued beyond the opening I do think my film would challenge the conventions of a thriller to horror, as there would be a lot of emotions caused by visual shots.
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