Research findings from the Thriller Genre

The idea of a thriller is to keep the audience at the edge of their seats in anticipation and to promote intense excitement, anxiety and nerve-wracking tension. The only rule of a thriller is to provide thrills and the plot builds to a climax. To build this suspense, tension building music is used and camera shots are fast pace with quick cuts. There is a lot of camera movement involved. Camera shots are usually point of view shots or close ups. In a thriller audiences expect to see a cross genre between thriller and action/adventure, so producers put this in inorder to attract their target audience. Codes and conventions of the Thriller genre play on stereotypes such as female characters playing the victim and they are stereotypically vulnerable and weak, whereas male characters are represented as strong and powerful that is why therefore the male characters kill the female characters. Also, Thrillers are usually set in a city or quiet country village, urban or isolated suburban settings. This is due to the theme of horrors surrounding isolation but also, murder, pain or terrorism which are some of societies worries or fears. Low-key lighting is used to create a spooky atmosphere but also to create shadows which can hide parts of a character and can also emphasis the unknown. Most thrillers are set at night time as they same affect would not be created if scenes were filmed in the day time. Props are used such as weapons like guns and knifes to make the audience feel threatened. Colours play a big part in the codes and conventions of a thriller as they can signify an emotion of a character or a situation, for example when red colours are used in thrillers/horror films, they signify danger or blood.