Thriller Genre

The Thriller genre is based around suspense and tension. Simply, the aim of a Thriller film is to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.
Thriller films are notoriously stressful leaving the audience anxious and nervous for the main characters or the victims in the film.

Here are some examples of Thriller Films:

'The Silence of the Lambs'- An FBI agent develops a relationship with a serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lector, in order to gain Lector’s help and contacts in the hunt for another serial killer.

'The Great Escape' - A huge group of british prisoners of war, plan an escape from a German war camp in the middle of World War II.

'North By Northwest' - Mistaken for a government agent by foreign spies, an advertising agent travels cross-country trying to survive.

Thriller films are often hybrid films clashed with another genre. For example, the main thriller sub-genres are, Action or Adventure Thriller's, Sci-Fi Thriller's, Psychological Thriller's and Western Thrillers.

Here are some other examples of iconic thriller films:

The Terminator (1984)
Basic Instinct (1992)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995)
The Bourne Legacy (2012)
Mission: Impossible (1996)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Goldfinger (1964)
 Planet of the Apes (1968)
Jaws (1975)

Codes and Conventions of a Thriller Film

Our groups 5 minute short film takes a thriller genre. The aim of a thriller genre, is to keep the audience on the edge of their seats throughout the film. The plot in thriller films is set against a problem, an escape, a mission or a mystery. In the case of our film, a mystery is developed throughout the plot. The mystery surrounds a girl called Alice, who to all of her friends and family has completely gone off the rails. A group of media students decide to base their media project on filming Alice and her family, friends and members of the community who used to know Alice.

From my research, the Codes and Conventions of a thriller film are mainly the camera angles, sound, editing and lighting. What I mean by this is that these codes and conventions add suspense to a thriller film.

Camera Angles

The use of camera angles are a huge factor to create a thriller genre film. The camera angles help to express character's emotions and body language. Most thriller films use a range of close-ip and extreme close-up shots of character facial emotions. An example of a this is in a film called 'Band of Brothers', where a character is shot, whilst a close-up of the characters face is shown. This shows the characters pain to the audience. Another shot to follow the codes and conventions of a thriller is a Dolly shot. This shot is used in films such as 'Goodfellas'. In this film the camera quickly tracks through a room and makes the audience think something dramatic is going to take place. This 'dolly zoom' shot which is featured in the 1970's thriller film 'Jaws'. This shot put you in the mind of the man in the frame. As his emotions are expressed by his facial expression which is zoomed in on, whilst the background is sent shooting backwards. This gives a psychedelic affect to the shot and suggests that the man has just seen something strange or terrifying. The human visual system uses size and perspective cues to judge the relative sizes of objects. If the human eye sees a perspective change or a size change is a visually disturbing effect. Depending on which way the dolly zoom effect is shot, can either make the background suddenly grow in size and detail which dominates the foreground. Or in this case the foreground becomes immense and overwhelms the rest of the surroundings. would be a brilliant shot to include in our 5 minute short film. Perhaps to show the facial expressions of a character who is also experiencing something strange and unordinary.

Sound

Strong and distinctive music that adds tension is appropriate in thriller films to add suspense. Music such as strings and themes as they make a different mood and theme for thriller films. For example, the music from 'Psycho' which plays in the film's famous 'shower scene', adds the effect of anxiety to the audience, which adds to the effect of the visual footage. This can be describe as tension building music.

Editing

Editing is an important code and convention of a thriller film. Quick cuts between frames are an important feature which raises suspense and anxiety. This is shown in the 'Psycho shower scene', shown above. The quick cuts combined with the loud and piercing music makes the scene fast paced and very intense for the audience. 

Lighting

The use of shadows and low lighting are codes and conventions of thriller films, which create a mysterious environment. Low lighting and shadows are shown in the Psycho shower scene, which increase the drama and tension because of the decrease visibility. Low-level lighting and shadows are closely linked. If a character is shown to have low-level lighting or a shadow covering half of their face for example, this shows the audience the character has a split personality and that they’re mysterious. This gives the audience the determination to find out why the character is mysterious and motivation to carry on engaging in the film.


This mind map shows more codes and conventions of a thriller genre film on a wider scale...

http://www.mindmeister.com/219500572/codes-and-conventions-of-a-thriller-film

To summarise the codes and conventions of a Thriller genre film, this is a list of effects and features our group will use in our 5 minute short film:
Low-level lighting, shadows, rapid editing, sudden changes in camera angle, high-tension music, flashbacks, use of photographs/images/articles and black and white colouring.

Rapid editing increases the shock and horror of an event that is happening on screen.

High-tension music creates a high level of suspense and makes the audience feel awkward and out of their comfort zone.

Flashbacks can relate to a shift in time and confuse the audience, which represents the characters confused thoughts or horrific past life.

Research into Certificate

We are intending to create a 'twist' within our film, maintaining throughout the duration of the film a different perspective on the truth of Alice's condition. From this, we will evidently be integrating no horror images until the end, which, in turn would be very short; to create a cliffhanger/scary twist. From this, we need to look into British Board

Research into Similar Films

The Devil Inside

The Devil Inside is a 2012 American supernatural horror film directed by William Brent Bell and written by Bell and Matthew Peterman. It is a documentary-style film about a woman who becomes involved in a series of exorcisms during her quest to determine what happened to her mother, a woman who murdered three people as a result of being possessed by a demon. It was released theatrically on January 6, 2012.

Here are some clips of the typical features and themes within The Devil Inside. Showing some elements of documentary style techniques to use and develop into our own film.






This scene works well in demonstrating documentary style elements, with the use of amateur-like camera use, mise en scene and diegetic sounds to create a very realistic effect. Similar to the ideas we have for our film.

Reviews

Screen Rant’s Ben Kendrick reviews The Devil Inside

The Devil Inside is presented as assembled found footage that follows twenty-something Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) as she reunites with her mother, Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley), and searches for an exorcist that can free Maria of a long-running demon possession. Maria has been locked away in a Catholic psychiatric ward, following an attempted exorcism that resulted in the murder of three people 20 years prior.However, as Isabella spends more time with Maria in the ward, strange occurrences begin to escalate as a dormant evil finds a convenient batch of new visitors to terrorize.

Some moviegoers will no doubt be ready to compare The Devil Inside to the 2010 film The Last Exorcism – since  the film also features unique locales, documentary-style filmmaking, body-contorting horror sequences, and a weighty religious side-arc. In addition, The Devil Inside also relies on a similarly grounded tone – with a lot of exposition to fill out the story. Instead of the limited (horror in a box) scope and slow-burn pacing of the Paranormal Activity series, The Devil Inside employs larger sequences that feature characters rushing from room to room to uncover a mystery, or run for their lives. While the marketing might lead moviegoers to believe that the majority of the film takes place inside the Catholic psych ward, the film actually covers a surprising amount of Italian locales, while the exorcists’ “scientific” approach to freeing people of demon possession offers some fresh ideas – not to mention smart suspense cues.

Evan Helmuth as David in 'The Devil Inside'

The exorcisms in the film deliver some intriguing moments, but while there are definitely a number of jump scares throughout The Devil Inside, overall the “scariest” points tend to be less “frightening” and rely on expectation and tension more than in-your-face frights. The possibility of something terrible happening fuels most of the film’s best sequences – though, looking back, some horror fans may feel as though not a lot actually happens by the end of the various proceedings.

For better or for worse (depending on how much character drama a filmgoer wants in their found footage films), The Devil Inside spends a lot of time developing the primary characters – especially how the two main exorcists in the film feel about the Catholic church. David (Evan Helmuth) is a “company man” who, despite his frustrations with pastoral politics, believes in the church and identifies strongly with Catholic doctrine. Ben (Simon Quarterman), on the other hand, is the nephew of an accomplished exorcist – and feels that working outside of the church is the only way to truly help victims afflicted by demon possession. Along with the primary narrative arc involving Isabella, the movie spends a lot of time developing these side stories – all for very little payoff. As events unfold, The Devil Insidecompletely abandons character building and resolution in favor of “shocking” set pieces. One Ben-centric story bit is especially under served – even though it’s hinted at more than once. The result is an uneven narrative experience that’s front-loaded with too much exposition and ends without any real payoff for the mythos (or the characters). Similarly, audience members will probably find the film’s conclusion extremely abrupt or possibly outright infuriating – at least if they are hoping for an interesting (or exciting) climactic resolution.

Suzan Crowley as possessed mother Maria Rossi

That said, the most outright bizarre aspect of the film is the way that the “documentary” is actually presented onscreen. A number of segments feature hand-held camera work, via cameraman Michael (Ionut Grama), coupled with static security-like footage. However, on more than one occasion following close-up hand-held camera footage (i.e., Michael in the room filming), The Devil Insidecuts to one of the static shots ( where Isabella and Rosa are the only ones in the room, for example). While some moviegoers will no doubt consider this nitpicking, the success of “found footage” films is in their ability to (for a brief moment) attempt to trick the audience into believing that these things actually happened. As a result, anyone who is invested in how the film is being presented will likely be pulled out – due to the inconsistent strategies in presenting the footage.

The Devil Inside won’t break any new ground in the “found footage” horror genre, but it does offer some intriguing ideas about exorcism, a pair of interesting characters, and a number of tense (though not entirely frightening) moments. Overall, fans of the genre are likely to enjoy elements of the film – though, given the slow, exposition-heavy opening act and a TOTAL  lack of any ending or closure, many moviegoers will leave the theater feeling as though the experience wasn’t worth the ticket money.

Risk Assessments for all of the locations of our group's film

This is the Risk Assessment for the entire production of our film. All serious, moderate and overall potential dangers are accounted for. This will make our film production safer for the camera and lighting crew including the director, actors and anyone else involved with the production of our group's short film, who is on the site of filming.

For further information about the importance of Risk Assessments Click Here.