Thriller Genre

Thriller is a very broad genre, it is characterized by fast pacing, frequent action and a resourceful hero. However there is no specific setting for a thriller, it is such a wide genre that it includes different ends of the spectrum, from crime thrillers, spy thrillers all the way to techno thrillers, medical thrillers and even erotic thrillers. Thriller is full of these many subgenres, that help divide up the genre as a whole and easily allows us to classify each specific film easily.
Thriller are films that are known to provoke intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Strictly speaking the genre can be defined as a film that relentlessly pursues a single-minded goal. Thriller films are meant to continually have the audience on the edge of their seats as it leads up to a nail-biting climax.
Due to some of the feelings that evoke from the thriller genre it can often get confused with a very similar horror genre. this often leads to the hybrid genres in which both types of genre are intertwined together.
An example a of early thriller films are those by Hitchcock, who is regarded as the creator of the thriller genre. Alfred Hitchcock has helped to shape modern-day thrillers. His work meant that he was acknowledged as the master of the thriller genre. He would manipulate the audience's fears and desires. This has lead to him being the influence of many thriller films and arguably the thriller genre itself.

The thriller genre has many subgenres such as:



Action-Adventure Thriller
Treasure hunt, search for a lost archaeological site, the worlds lost meteorite, a mystery lost to time--action-adventure brings back our childhood fantasies of being the adventurer. This is also one of the hardest subgenres of thriller to write because of the amount of action required.

Disaster Thriller

Any kind of disaster that can affect lots of people--a dam bursting, a tornado sweeping through Los Angeles, a luxury cruise liner sinking.

Historical Thriller
Thrillers set in the past, usually combined with other subgenres. This particular subgenre is rather uncommon.

Medical Thriller
Robin Cook introduced us to the medical thriller, where modern medical technology that is supposed to help people is morphed into something deadly.

Religious Thriller
Popularized by the blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, this subgenre uses the rich and long history of religion to build stories with high stakes and deadly politics.

Serial Killer Thriller
This is an extremely popular subgenre of thriller. In this subgenre, a serial killer is terrorizing a group of people with horrific violence. The detective's goal is to stop the killer before he takes his next victim.

Techno Thriller
When people talk about thriller, the first thing they usually think of is a techno thriller like Tom Clancy's books. In techno-thrillers, the technology drives the plot, whether it's new military technology for a submarine or forensics.

Thriller Devices

Literary devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is a villain driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles the hero must overcome. The genre is a flexible form that can undermine audience complacency through a dramatic rendering of psychological, social, and political tensions. Jump cuts, low and high key lighting are often used with the backing a slow dramatic score that picks up in pace are also common sights to see in thriller movies.

Films such as 28 Days Later are a very effective example of a Thriller. It is a zombie movie and these usualy are 'wet' horror's but 28 Days Later is more psychological and cleverly uses the score to create tension. It keeps the viewer on the edge because your always waiting for the next zombie attack and wondering how, if they do, get out of it. This is very effective as what the audience expects isn't neccesarily what happens and they are caught out at the most unexpecting moments in the film.

Research Of Opening Sequences

An opening sequence is used to establish the mood and the atmosphere that the film will contain. On top of this the opening sequence is used to introduce the characters, plot, location, theme as well as allowing the audience to identify the sub-genre the film fits in to.

The opening sequence is supposed to reveal enigmas to the audience and to create tension. On top of this the opening sequence doesn't have to necessarily link to the film and can therefore be rather linear. The opening sequence can also give a franchise to the film and make it easily recognizable to the audience, which is very handy when it comes to making sequels.

Opening sequences are used to show the most important members of the cast and crew. they are used to showcase the most important people involved in the production of the film, meanwhile the closing credits show an extensive list of everyone who was involved in the film.

Opening sequences are usually shown on a blank background or static image, however this isn't always the case. Many films such as the James Bond sequence use a classic score and theme editing in the background, this is what the series is well renowned for.

Different approaches have different effects as if they are dramatic with a score and some flashing static images they will be seen as very dramatic, however if they use different images it may create a humorous setting which will set the basis for the film.

Thriller Genre

Thriller is a very broad genre, it is characterized by fast pacing, frequent action and a resourceful hero. However there is no specific setting for a thriller, it is such a wide genre that it includes different ends of the spectrum, from crime thrillers, spy thrillers all the way to techno thrillers, medical thrillers and even erotic thrillers. Thriller is full of these many subgenres, that help divide up the genre as a whole and easily allows us to classify each specific film easily.
Thriller are films that are known to provoke intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Strictly speaking the genre can be defined as a film that relentlessly pursues a single-minded goal. Thriller films are meant to continually have the audience on the edge of their seats as it leads up to a nail-biting climax.
Due to some of the feelings that evoke from the thriller genre it can often get confused with a very similar horror genre. this often leads to the hybrid genres in which both types of genre are intertwined together.
An example a of early thriller films are those by Hitchcock, who is regarded as the creator of the thriller genre. Alfred Hitchcock has helped to shape modern-day thrillers. His work meant that he was acknowledged as the master of the thriller genre. He would manipulate the audience's fears and desires. This has lead to him being the influence of many thriller films and arguably the thriller genre itself

Research For Our Coursework

We have had many ideas for our coursework and these have been greatly influenced by films that we have seen. As already mentioned one film that has heavily influenced our current idea is Batman the Dark Knight. It is a great film and has many themes of a thriller and on its own is a stand out film, therefore we are looking for ideas based around this film.

One of our main ideas was from one particular sequence, the sequence involves Batman and he has to decide whether to save one person for himself or another for the people of Gotham City.

Research on audience

Thriller is such a wide and varied Genre, therefore when we consider what audience our film will be tailored towards we have to be very careful. The amount of sub-genres and the different type of audience they attract means we have to be very considerate of the type of film that we are making. An example of this is that more women will be attracted to a romantic comedy or more of a male audience for an action film.

Our film could be described as a hybrid of two thriller sub-genres, the hybrid would be between psychological thriller and crime thriller. The decision allows us to target a specific audience. The audience that our film is likely to attract would be both male and female, the specific age range that the film will target will be between 16-25. It is most likely to attract this specific audience due to the characters in the film being teenagers, making the film more likely to appeal to the teenage generation. Also an audience of this specific age should be gripped by the excitement and suspense the film presents.

The Thriller genre tends to be aimed from the age 12+. The genre however isn't just aimed towards children primarily, a lot of films classified in the thriller genre tend to have a much older audience due to the nature of the films and are therefore rated 16+ and to a lesser extent 18+.

Within the British Board of film consideration guidelines it mentions that adults should be able to view what they want as long as it remains within the law and that the classification of a film is based on the involvement of criminal behaviour, human sexual activity, illegal drugs, violent behavior or horrific behavior and incidents and how they are portrayed.