In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

A thriller is a type of film or literature that is generally designed to be very tense and very often they are set around one main character, the protagonist. There are several types of thriller, such as psychological thrillers, crime thrillers and action thrillers. Psychological thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs, are based upon mental issues with the character and is something that cannot be overcome physically. A crime thriller, like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, generally involves a character solving a crime that personally affects the character. Action thrillers, such as Die Hard, involve a character fighting towards a solution to his problem, with explosions occurring regularly. A main character will generally face a tough problem and have a difficult time getting over this problem. In a lot of thrillers death is heavily involved and is a big part of the quest the character must face. Thrillers are also very mysterious and there are many things left untold until the end of the film.

 

Many thrillers use quite low lighting to add tension to the film and music is generally quite dark and slow and plays a massive part in thrillers. For example, in Citizen Kane, the lighting is very low and features a lot of fade shots and a slow dramatic music piece in the background.

 

Thrillers use a wide variety of shots. Commonly used shots include facial close up shots and mid-range action shots. In No Country For Old Men, there is a close up shot of a character as he is struggling on the floor with another character. These shots show the tension in his face and how calm the character is whilst killing someone. It also shows who the main bad character of the film will be.

Some camera movements are used to make the audience feel like they are in the film and they are seeing things from a characters perspective. In the Bourne Identity, a point of view shot is used to show the audience what the character is seeing and to make the audience feel like they are part of the film. It also gives a clear indication of who the main character is. It also adds mystery as to who the main character is as the character is not shown during the opening shots.   

The opening of a thriller needs to add mystery and make the audience ask questions. The opening needs to make the audience want to keep on watching the film. Wide, long shots are often used at the very beginning of thrillers to set the scene. In No Country For Old Men, wide, panoramic shots show where the film will be set and the barren landscape that is shown suggests that the film could be a thriller

Dissolve shots are often used to add tension and mystery. In the opening of Citizen Kane, dissolve and fade shots are used to show one of the characters house. It creates a lot of mystery and it makes the audience want to carry on watching and find out more about the house and why it is so important.

In our thriller we featured it on one main character and he also faced a problem that he had to solve alone. There is no real action in our thriller and a lot of it is psychologically based. We did attempt to make our thriller rather tense so the audience really have to concentrate and are alert to what is going on. We featured several cut-away shots in the opening of our thriller to add psychological effect.

We also used cross dissolves in the opening to show how the action moves forward and the change in shot. Without the cross dissolves, the opening wouldn’t flow as well and it would not make much sense.