The rules of Thrillers

Thrillers should have;
An antagonist, resourceful protagonist, suspense, a magufin, an enigma, reason for conflict, a more powerful antagonist who throughout the film gets beaten by the less powerful protagonist and fast paced action.

Some features of thrillers are,
flash backs, mysterious phone calls, a false hero, the hero falls in love, weapons, high tech gadgets.

Chuck Jones, the rules for "Road Runner"

The Road Runner cannot harm or upset the Coyote except by going "Beep! Beep!"
No outside force can harm the Coyote only his own ineptitude or failure of Acme products.
The Coyote could stop anytime if he were not a fanatic.
No dialogue ever except "Beep! Beep!"
The road runner must stay on the road otherwise logically he would not be called the Road Runner.
All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters - the Southwest American desert.
All materials, tools, weapons or mechanical conveniences  must be obtained from Acme corporation.
Whenever possible, make gravity the coyote's greatest enemy.
The coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failure.

Thrillers and the 5 types

"The thriller is a very difficult genre to pin down because it covers a wide range of films. Thrillers are films of suspense that are supported to instill terror in to the audience." Susan Hayward, key concept in film studies.

There are five types of thrillers, these are:
Spy thrillers like Mission Impossible
Political thrillers like Manchurian Candidate
Conspiracy thrillers such as State of play
Legal thrillers such as Time to kill
Psychological thrillers like Psycho

"when u enjoy something, you must not let logic get to much in the way. Like villains in James Bond movies, whenever bond breaks in to the complex: ah Mr Bond, welcome, come in. Let me show you my entire evil plan and then put you in a death machine that doesn't work" Terry Seinfeld

127 Hours

The 2010 film 127 Hours is a film about a mountain climber who gets trapped by a boulder near the Grand Canyon in America. We follow the climber from the moment he leaves his house to the moment where he is home. we follow him through all the time he is trapped by the boulder and when he has to amputate his arm to save his life.

Director: Danny Boyle
Writers: Danny Boyle Simon, Beaufoy
Stars: James Franco

the budget for this film was an estimate $18 million. In the opening weekend the film grossed $264,851 from 4 screens n the USA alone.world wide the film has Grossed $57,547,568.

This film is not a convensional thriller but I am writing about it as it is a good example of effective build up of tension. In this film the threat is coming from nature and not a person. The resourceful hero uses everything he has with him to help him to survive. For example he uses his ropes to create a seat to stop him from using his energy. this is a very simple story which grips the viewer.

The film shows time going as the time on the video camera is shown several times and then the battery of the camera goes which shows that time is running out.

Source Code

source code a 2011 action thriller that sees a soldier who wakes up in a body of an unknown civilian and discovers his part of a mission to find out the bomber of a chicago commuter train. The story is not simple and at times can be very confusing. There are many points in the film where we get put off the track of who the bomber is.

Director: Duncan Jones
Writer: Ben Ripley
Staring: Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monoghan

The estimated budget of this film was $32 million and grossed $14,812,094 in the USA alone by the 3rd of April 2011. To date it has grossed over $54,696,000.

There are three types of thriller themes in this film, these are physical action, phycological thriller and detective story. the physical action in this film comes from where they are on the train searching for the bomber, the phycological part is how the film fits together and lastly the detective story is when we try and figure out who the bomber actually is.

AS coursework

the titles and opening of a new fiction film in the thriller genre to last two minutes. The coursework is 50% of the course. The production itself is worth 60% of the marks. The blog is worth 40% of the marks. 20 marks are awarded for planning and research, construction is worth 60 makes and the valuation is worth 20 marks.
marks are awarded for demonstrating excellence in the following criteria:
Holding a shot steady
Framing a shot
Using a variety of shot distances
Shooting material appropriate to the task set
Editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer
using varied shot transitions, captions and other effects selectively and where appropriate for the task set
Using sound with images

Preliminary task

On Friday we started our preliminary task, which is to show the use of eye line match, match on action, 180 degree rule and shot/reverse shot. 


We are following this plan:
character A walks towards the door.
Character A enters through the door, crossing the room to where B is seated.

Character A+B exchange a few lines of dialogue.
Character A exits the room


We decided that character A was going to be Jack, character B was going to be Sunnie and I was going to film it. We got through most of the scenes but still have a few more to do and then we will start to edit what we filmed. 

Preliminary Task

The preliminary task is a demonstration of continuity editing. It must show successful use of:

Match on action- where you see a character doing something in one shot and continues it in another.

Shot/reverse shot- where the camera films over person A’s shoulder while person B is talking. It then cuts to show person B talking while being filmed over Person A’s shoulder

180 degree rule-this rule is a basic guideline that states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called “crossing the line”.

Eye line match- this is where a close up of a person’s face and then cuts to someone or something else. This makes it look like the person is looking at this object.

Character A walks towards the door.

Character A enters through the door and crosses the room to where B is seated.

Character A+B exchange few lines of dialogue.

There is at least one eye line match

Either character A or B exits the room.

Psycho

Psycho is a 1960’s thriller by Alfred Hitchcock which sees a mad man murdering several people. The film starts with a women stealing $40,000 and running away. She stops at the Bates hotel where she gets murdered in the shower. An investigator and the women’s sister follow her tracks to the hotel where the story develops in to more brutal murders. 

Run for 109 minutes

The budget of this film was an estimated $806,947 and grossed $50,000,000 up until 2007.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writers:  Joseph Stefano (screenplay) and Robert Bloch (novel)

Starring: Anthony Perkins, Jane Leigh and Vera miles

The Macguffin of this film is that a young woman steals $40000 and runs away.

As a usual thriller psycho has many fast paced action scenes such as the staircase, the shower and the seller scenes. In all of these fast paced scenes the music by Bernard Herrmann builds the suspense and tension. The strident, discordance music does this as the music is sharp and sets slight fear and into the viewer as they know that something is going to happen but are not sure when. For example when the investigator is climbing the stairs the music is playing as soon as he heads up the stairs however nothing happens until he gets to the top.

The screenplay deceives the viewers into thinking that Marion was main character, however her death due to the murder is ruled out and we are still wondering who the main character is. The strident, discordant music of Bernard Herrmann increases the suspense in the film.

Psycho is a villain driven plot because after Marion is murdered the investigator goes to the Bates hotel who then is murdered. Lastly the sister and partner of Marion goes to the Bates hotel and the last fast paced scene takes place in the cellar.

In the original film there were no advanced screenings and all viewers were told not to tell people anything about what happened in the film, this was said at the end of the film. 

Psycho was remade in 1998. It was directed by Gus Van Sant and stared Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche and Julianne Moore. This ramke ran for 105 minutes.

Paranormal Activity

The 2007 thriller Paranormal activity runs for 86 minutes and was released in 2009 in the UK.

This film is about a women who has been haunted by a demon since she was little and now she has moved in to a house with her partner. They are then increasing disturbed by a demonic presence.

Written and directed by: Oren Peli

Starring: Katie Featherstone (Katie) and Micah Sloat (Micah)

 Produced by: Jason Blum and Steven Schneider

The budget of this film was an estimated $15000. On the opening week it grossed $77873 from only 12 screens in USA. To the 21st January 2010 they grossed $193,355,800 worldwide.

The story shows a sceptic who after a while starts to believe in the demons who are disturbing him and his partner. The film shows takes in the night and day. It is filmed at night to show all the action and to build the suspense but it also filmed in the day to break up the suspense. The whole film is recorded using a regular film camera that any one of the public would use for their home videos. This and the general day to day activities of the characters with friends coming over makes the film seem realistic and believable as it also makes the viewers realise that we can do it our self.

The story becomes even more believable when experts and internet pages are used to describe what happened to other people in similar circumstances to Micah and Katie.

Tension and suspense are built up by the use of simple sounds that in the circumstances of the film become increasingly scary. The selective use of sound volume also makes the sounds and the visuals seem scary and jumpy.  There is no use of non-diegetic sounds in the whole film.

Effective use of light and dark puts attention on some objects or people to focus attention and to also avoid attention in some cases. An example of this is when the bed is lighted but all the surroundings are in dark. This draws the attention of the viewer to the bed but when shadows and movements are produced in the dark areas our attention is then drawn to that.

All this then builds to an inevitable climax.

North by Northwest

North by northwest is a 1959 thriller which shows a hapless New York advertisement executive who is mistaken by for a government agent who is pursued across the country while he looks to find ways of surviving.

North by northwest was written buy Ernest Lehman Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and stars Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason.

The many fast paced action scenes show us that this film is a good example of a thriller. The plain scene creates tension as we are waiting to see who is going to meet Thornhill. As all the cars go by more and more tension builds. Thornhill starts to talk to one of the people waiting for the bus who suggest that a plane is crop dusting where no crops are growing. The plane then flies towards Thornhill following him through the crops and finally crashes into an oil tanker. Thornhill then steals a near by vehicle to escape from the scene. Tension is built in this scene as we are unsure of what is going to happen to Thornhill.

Thornhill is a resourceful hero as he uses sensible ways of out running the police and the villains. In the train scene he hides in the toilets when ticket inspectors and police are looking for him and steals a guard’s clothes to escape the train without being identified. Suspense is built up in this scene as we are unsure how he is going to escape the police on an enclosed train where it seems impossible to hide, but Thornhill along with Miss Kendall find places where he can hide. The fast pace scene where they quickly leave the restaurant helps to build up this suspense. 

The red herring that is used in this film is that at first we think that Miss Kendall is just a women helping Thornhill escape the police, however we then think that Miss Kendall is one of the villains and is helping them to get Thornhill. We later find out that she is working for the government and is spying on the villains

A macguffin is a plot element that catches the viewers attention at the beginning of the film and drives to plot on. Major players in the story are willing to sacrifice anything to get to it despite the macguffin. The macguffin in this film is the tapes.   

About Me

Hello welcome to my thriller blog. My name is Luke Phillips and I am studying Media Studies along with ICT Business studies and Health and social Care. This blog is part of my AS Media studies course work and i will be making regular posts about the thriller genre.