Conventions - Thriller

The conventions of a film are all the techniques used in order to create its specific genre which in this instance will be the genre Thriller. Thrillers are carefully constructed and many things such as techniques, plotlines and characters are taken into consideration whilst the film is being produced in order to be a thriller.

Plot Lines

The main convention of a thriller is to create as much suspense as possible for the audience. Thrillers are always jam-packed with danger and high alert movements in order to create tense moods and make as much suspense as possible. The plot lines are normally based around a good side (the protagonists) and the evil side (the antagonists) who have engaged in a persuit or anything negative that creates a tense feeling when viewing.

Themes

The themes for thrillers normally follow the same basic idea, some of the themes are:

action- or adventure- thrillers

sci-fi thrillers (such as Alien (1979))

crime-caper thrillers (such as The French Connection (1971))

western-thrillers (such as High Noon (1952))

film-noir thrillers (such as Double Indemnity (1944))

even romantic comedy-thrillers (such as Safety Last (1923))

(Information taken from http://www.filmsite.org/thrillerfilms.html)

Characters

As mentioned earlier a thriller will always contain a protagonist and an antagonist following a particular story line. The protagonist will normally be faced with a hard to escape situation such as an antagonist trying to inflict as much trauma to the protagonist as possible. This creates huge amounts of suspense as the audience are normally sympathetic to the protagonist and wish for them to survive whilst the antagonist poses a major threat to this.

A technique used within the thriller genre is 'Red Herrings' which provides the audience with misleading information and after the truth has been revealed, the audience are shocked with what they have discovered. Red Herrings create a lot of suspense within films and are commonly used by producers in order to create as much of a reaction out of the audience as possible. The antagonist will always be shown to be a dark character with an unhappy upbringing or an event that has taken place which has ruined their moral beings etc.

An example of a thriller that follows this technique is Psycho, an example of this is the following clip:

Some types of characters involved within the Thriller genre are:

Police

Criminals

Terrorists

Stalkers

Innocent victims

Teenagers