Introduction to Thriller Codes and Conventions

Thriller codes and conventions are the essential parts which make up a thriller. We spoke about them in class, on what we thought they were. Here are some examples:

Characters - When a thriller is being written the writer has to make a good group of characters. As it is the characters that help to create the tension on screen, with out a menacing 'villain' and a strong hero or heroin, and of course strong character back grounds and dialogue the movie can not be a success.

Themes - Strong themes help to a story line to capture its audience. There is usually a battle between our hero who we have followed through our movie and our villain. We also have our stereotypical themes of fighting corruption, a terrorist, a hold up or a hostage situation. One of my favorite examples of a hostage theme is phone booth, its tense through out and keeps you as a audience member "on your toes". We will usually have a normal person maybe a policeman or a man of wealth in an extraordinary situation.

Plot Twists - Plot twists are used in many thriller films. Unexpected twists help to create a dramatic ending for the movie to compliment hopefully the exciting climax.

Setting - A thrillers setting also helps to create tension.

Example: If we had our hero tracking down a villain in a Mcdonalds at mid-day it wouldn't be as scary as it would if it it was in a woods at mid-night.

Sub genres - This is when a thriller film has attributes of other genres, this may be action, comedy or even sci-fi.

Mise -en-scene - This is: costumes; objects; weather; setting or natural and unnatural pieces of film.

An Introduction to Thrillers

We talked about what made a thriller film. We spoke about the obvious choices of thriller films, they were:
Tense atmosphere; dark lighting; dramatic plot twist; suspence; jumpy music; unsual angles; shakey camera angles; POV'S; fast paste camera work; climax; naturalisic and sub plots. To us all of the above were all combinations in a thriller, so when we are making our thriller movies we need to take these in to acount. If we want to make a professional looking thriller we will need to watch all different kinds of thriller movies, look at different techniques used to make our movie just as 'thrilling' and cutting edge.

This part of our introduction helped to get the idea of what our movie needs to be like, I think this was a really vital part of the course to start building our awareness top thriller films.

We were also introduced to Thriller films bywatching previous years openings.

This gave all of us a good incite of the quality of film we expected to produce. One I would like to comment on is one called 'End of the Line'. It opened up on shots of the setting around London, using diegectic sound of traffic and sirens, this was effective to help build tension of panic. One shot at the beginning was an extreme wide of the London eye, they had left the camera to film for a period of time so in editing they could speed it up and use the effect of time passing. This really set the scene well of day to day London.

We then had a sequence of film based around who we presume is the 'villain' of the film, with quick jump cuts of his home and him at a computer at a fast paste to build tension. This worked well as it made me want to know more about this specific character. Using over the shoulder shots we see pictures of crime scenes being uploaded to a memory stick, not showing us the whole screen was effective as it left the other parts a mystery.

Using hand held in the next sequence they had our supposed 'villain' storming down the street, having this effect it made us feel like we were walking with him.

We then see him end up at a unknown area of London and give someone else a document, who then passes it on for money, after this the film ends. This was good idea as it introduced a story line to there film and leaves the audience wanting more.

Throughout this sequence of film there is a continuous piece of music played, in mimics the beat of a heart. This helps to add extra tension, keeping the audience on the edge of seats.

I did feel their title sequence needed more work, However they may have felt it was better to spend more time on the actual footage than the title sequence.

This was a really good way of introducing us to thriller films also looking different shots it helped to give us a wider idea of what we will need to achieve on the course, and now we can also start to thinking of ideas.

An Introduction to Myself

Hello,
my name is Joseph Cocklin, I am in the theatre strand at The BRIT school. I was very happy to find out I had recieved a place for the media AS course as I want to go on to University to study both drama and media. I have been looking at jobs in the field and I am really attracted to the job as a AD; first, second or third.

My favorite movies are:
Pulp Fiction Written and directed by Quenten Tarrantino. I love Tarrentino's way of presenting film by chapters and slowly revealing the story line, Pulp Fiction I feel is his best movie with great performances from Samuel Jackson. John Travolta, Bruce willis and Tim Roff. Even though Tim is only in it for a small amount his character always has a strong impact in his cafe scenes. With Samuel Jackson delivering a fantastic monolouge, "The path of the rightress man..".

One of my other Favourite movies is The Elephant man, directed by David lynch. One of the main reasons I love this movie is the impact it has through out the movie; of constent sympathy the 'Elephant man'. The decision to make the film in black and white was a really good idea this was to make it less grusome to the humna eye when the elephant is first revealed. My favourite party of the film is when a group of people intrude into 'The Elephant Man's' room, When he is being man handled the director chose to add carnival music growing in volume throughout the scene, this is a really good effect and plays on thre heart strings of its audience.