Question 1

A thriller usually consists of a battle between the protagonist character and antagonist, when there is a disruption in the equilibrium. Then the story shows a chain of bad events building tension and suspense for the climax. The aim of the protagonist is to restore the justice; while the antagonist seeks to destroy it. There are many subgenres these included: Crime, Supernatural, psychological, spy etc. in crime thrillers it will usually follow the story from the villains point of view or the laws point of view. In supernatural thrillers it follows a typical mystery that includes the use of supernatural creatures like: ghosts, vampires etc. The thriller subgenre my group and I chose was the psychological thriller which plays on the psychological features of the character to make the audience uneasy and empisises the unstableness of the characters. We chose this because it is not an overused subgenre so it will interest people to see a different and original film. When people watch these they expect many different aspects such as: suspense, mystery, enigma .In our thriller we used the following elements. We used tension and suspense to make the audience feel as if they are on the edge on their seats to keep the audience interested and wanted to know what was going to happen. We also used a montage of shots to develop the idea of creating a background of the story in the film because it is usually shown more suttlely where as we showed it all at the end in a quick flash through of images which works because it is a break of tension then builds it up as it goes on. The antagonists identity is hidden in the opening to start the theme of identity that would run throughout the film, but we did add hints to create a denouement because the audience knows more than the characters to make the audience in control.

There are many different factors that make an affective thriller opening but how effective it is using the conventions is important that you use the right ones to create the correct subgenre that could include using conventions from other genres like for a supernatural thriller you would need to use some conventions from the horror genre to make it effective for example the film legion is a supernatural thriller that uses the horror conventions of overpowered creatures. This is a shot from the supernatural thriller legion and shows a demon like woman which looks like it belongs in a horror film but in this thriller they used this to make it more effective by incorporating a scary part to keep the audience on edge. There are also the main conventions of typical thrillers and these are as follows:Low key lighting:This is a low key shot from the film shutter island that shows the main character staring into the night, the use of the low key lighting creates a sense of mystery and confusion because it is almost implying that he is hiding in the dark which could and did foreshadow that later events in the film. The film is also a mystery thriller so it is very important to create the sense of mystery to keep the audience guessing.Quick cuts:This is a shot from the action thriller taken. This scene has a massive use of quick cuts because of the situation because the father is chasing after a boat with his taken daughter on it. it keeps cutting from inside the car to outside and also shots of the boat as it is moving away from him, this I a very effective to use the editing to create tension because as the audience watches they are asking them self if he is going to make it or not get there in time and lose his daughter. You could go on to say stereotypically the victim in the most thrillers is shown as weak and defenceless whereas the hero is strong or clever or has a very distinctive quality about them witch puts them ahead of the enemy, the example of this is also taken because the victim is the daughter and when she is shown she is portrayed as weak and gullible, whereas the dad is a very military man so this is his edge that he has a military mind so is ahead of the villains that seem that they are unorganised.Tension music:The soundtrack of a thriller is one of the most important because without it there would be no atmosphere to set the scene of the thriller and so it would become boring easily. The best use of music I have seen in a thriller is probably in the horror thriller psycho. The sound used in this part of the shot was used with dramatic non diegetic and tense effect. The sharp sounds of the violins in this shot mimic the movements of the killer and their victim which gives the audience an audio and visual representation on the stabbing so it is like even if they were not watching they could tell what was going on. You could also say this shot shows how the protagonist is in the mercy of the antagonist which is typical to most thrillers because it creates tension because you would have got to know the character in the media production and you would be put on edge in this situation because you would not want them to die.Most of our inspiration for our thriller opening came from a specific part of the psychological horror film Sinister we used this because it was a very effective thriller for people on edge and then breaking the tension in clever ways. The specific pear we used was from a film within the film that showed the camera following a chain to a car with people inside. You can see the two shots below one from Sinister (left) and the one from Innocence (right)

The convention shown in these shots is low-key lighting for both. this low-key lighting as I said earlier is to create more tension because we are basically saying you can see only what you want to see because it is difficult to see what is around her and by using the torch to create this is creates a pin point position on the screen that we want you to see. We also used a lot of close ups in the opening so we did not give too much away to the audience early on this use of constant close-ups on the victims body shows the details of the victim, like the precise injuries on the victim like I the show you can see that the victim was hanged and was In a struggle because of how the neck is and the rope that is around the neck. We also used a very effective tension track called Shattrath- Burning Crusade which used very deep noises and then some very high peak sounds which were violins which were perfect when we needed to create tension because in our research we found out from the film Psycho that violins that it is a very effective way to create the tension. The shot types we used were mostly point of view shots, close/extreme close ups and some longshot. We used POV shots to put you in the body of the protagonist which was finding the body this created a link between the audience and the protagonist early on so when this protagonist was attacked by the antagonist it was not expected. The use of mid shots is there when the audience needs to know the information so that it makes sense. In the editing of the production we added an effect called blast which slightly darkened the shot and also gave it a green tint to it so this was effective to give the opening a chilling or unsettling feel which is essential to create a professional and decent psychological thriller. The pictures above show a untypical but effective convention in thrillers which is to handwriting with either newspaper cuttings or messaging, this is effective because it makes the antagonist seem more organised and you could say professional at creating fear.This is a very typical shot in thrillers it shows the antagonist behind a victim or the main protagonist this creates tension and fear because it puts the protagonist at risk without them knowing about it so you feel the fear for them. Extreme close ups are used a lot in thrillers to highlight a specific thing in this case it is a match and a door handle so it is a very typical thing to do, it also gives the thriller a mystery feel because you think if this is what they want me to see what are they not showing me? This creates an under layer of tension because the audience then expect the unknown to become known in a tension breaking way so that the audience lose the tension quickly to make them almost scared. The use of silhouettes is common in thrillers such as the one on the right which looks to from around the 1950s