History of Thriller Film's

Thrillers have changed a lot throughout the years, one of the first thriller films was silent and the second famous was released in sound but also silent. In the 1950's Hitchcock added Technicolor to the films, the films now included glamourous stars. Later on, Thriller films became more violent, viscous and explicit, they became more tense and had deeper story lines. Thriller's from this decade are mainly psychological ones that deal with obsession, domestic violence, revenge and mentally ill characters.

Iconic Sounds connected with genre

A lot of pieces of music or sounds that are used in Thriller films, start off with a loud distinct noise that the audience recognises, it is often a loud bang or a slam in a door. It then quite often goes into a piece of music that is quite fast and quite often the piece of music sounds like someone is running, maybe away from someone as this is a frequent convention from a thriller film. It gives the audience the idea that something bad is going to happen or has already happened and that character needs to get away. The music sometimes slows down but has sudden noises which makes it seem like the character could be trying to hide.The music sometimes picks the beat back up and we can just hear certain sounds such as breathing, dripping water or footsteps.

However, some pieces of music that are used are quiet pieces which are soothing but have a beat to them and the beat is consistent throughout the whole piece of music. This type of music can have the opposite effect and the audience may feel as everything is very calm and relaxed and then if something that makes the audience jump, suddenly happens, this music may pick up this freight  as the audience wouldn't have been expecting it. Slow music is sometimes used when a character is hiding but wouldn't be used during a chase scene. 

Most of the time, in Thriller films, classical music is used. 

The type of music that is chosen can cause a lot of tension and create the whole atmosphere.  

Usual Suspects Opening Scene Recording

This is a recording where we are talking about the stereotypical conventions of the Usual Suspects thriller opening scene. 

Genre Conventions of a Thriller Film

This is my mind-map showing genre conventions of a thriller film and the audience's expectations. When we was completing this task, we thought that the characters would be violent because in thriller films, most of the characters are violent. We thought that there would be crime and criminals such as murderers and stalkers because we often see these in thriller films. We thought that there is usually a hero and also victims and some innocent victims too.

Group Pitch

Our film will be an psychological thriller, including a stalker and his victims. It will be called The Hunt. Our opening scene will show the victim dragging his first victim's body behind a car, the audience will then see the killer turn around and look for his next victim. He will spot a group of people but will start to profile one person.

Homages behind our idea are 'Prom Night' and Psycho.

Group Meeting - Thursday 24th November

We have decided on 2 proposal days for filming our final opening sequence, and these days are:
Monday 19th December
Tuesday 20th December

Thriller VoxPops

http://rebecca-gordon-media.blogspot.com/2011/12/thriller-expectations-vox-pops.html

The above is a link to see our thriller audience vox pops.