A thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, gaming and TV. They're often fast-paced with frequent action full of suspense. Thrillers are broad as there's many sub genres for example: spy, political, conspiracy, military, medical, forensic, psychological and horror thrillers. A thriller usually consists of a battle between the protagonist and the antagonist, as the characters and story develops through a chain of bad events tension is being built for the climax.
Typical CEMS conventions seen in a thriller:
- Low key lighting to create dark lighting and set the mood.
- Sound track is often dark and creepy with low tones to set tension, or loud sudden sounds for effective jump scares.
- Costumes are varied, however, they're really important and often in thrillers the antagonist is seen wearing dark clothing and a mask to disguise them which adds mystery to the film as it's unknown.
- A variation of camera shots are seen, but a main one used is low angle shots which shows dominance of a character usually either the villain or hero.
- Often there's use of quick cuts between shots, usually used to suddenly to scare the audience due to surprise.
- The location of a lot of horrors usually have something in common, for example, it's usually a dark location such as an abandoned house or the woods. The location is often either of the extremes, either it's set in a remote area with no one around or a really populated city/area, but what both of these have in common is that they both provide tension as it's unknown where the villain is going to attack.
Thrillers are often cliché in some aspects purely so it grabs the audience and the audiences emotions so they can relate to it which helps the audience feel what the characters may be feeling, this makes the films personal to the viewer creating a more realistic feel.
Although opinions and feelings of thrillers vary from person to person the main intention of thrillers is often to keep the audience on edge through high-levels of anticipation, uncertainty, anxiety and tension. When you put it like that, makes you wonder why we endure such films.
Although opinions and feelings of thrillers vary from person to person the main intention of thrillers is often to keep the audience on edge through high-levels of anticipation, uncertainty, anxiety and tension. When you put it like that, makes you wonder why we endure such films.
