When looking at the different genres of thriller conventions, as a group we came up with a short-list of thriller conventions that interested us and we may be able to use for our final thriller filming. Here are some mood boards showing images relating to each conventions and our final decision explaining why some of these were not suitable.
Crime thriller A crime thriller is a genre that offered crime films and thrillers linking together, it shows a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime and the implications it has had. It often has focus on the criminal, showing his/her lifestyle and weapons they may use within their crimes. Also, it often shows police in a negative light, an example of a crime thriller is 'Seven'. As a group, we decided not to use a crime thriller, as it would be difficult to shoot with the stereotypical setting being based around a police station or bank, and we did not want to alarm any members of the public by the props we would have used (guns, knives) even if they looked unrealistic. It would also be difficult to include our ideas of mental illness within a crime thriller.
Legal/political thriller
Psychological thriller
A psychological thriller often shows the main character suffers from mental and emotional pain, rather than physical pain an example of this is 'Psycho'. As a group, we all quickly decided this would be an effective genre to use within our thriller film as our main theme. This will shock and disturb the audience, whilst creating a unique and unusual circumstance so it is not a typical storyline, for example murder. Here, we carefully began to plan our how we could adapt a psychological thriller to meet our demands with the equipment available, we looked at all different sections to do with a psychological film and decided a split personality disorder or schizophrenia would be the most effective if we could successful demonstrate this within our film to our audience. Therefore, lots of planning and research was necessary to make sure we understood these disorders, and eventually we picked schizophrenia as our main character can see a girl who is not really there.
Medical/disaster thriller
A medical/disaster thriller is where the hero or heroine are medical doctors working to solve an expanding medical problem, such as 'Awake'. A disaster thriller in which the main conflict is due to a natural or artificial disaster such as floods, earthquakes, etc with an example being 2012. We considered these genres as a group and discussed them in detail; we all agreed a medical thriller is a good idea, where the story line could be adapted easily. However, it would be difficult to incorporate the background into a medical thriller for example a hospital, as permission to film would be unlikely. Also, after watching the beginning of some medical thrillers we realised we did not have the available equipment to create realistic wounds. However, as a group we all liked this idea, and did eventually incorporate it into our final film, exploiting mental problems.
A legal thriller shows lawyers to be perceived in either a positive or negative light, confronting enemies outside and inside the courtroom. It usually perceives lawyers to lose a case or their life, and has a lot more based around a case than just the outcome, such as disturbed gangs etc. An example of a legal thriller is 'A few good men'. As a group, we all quickly came to the conclusion that using a legal thriller would not be suitable for us with the information needed and equipment we had available. We also considered whether a legal thriller would appeal to a mass market surrounding our targeted age group, and decided it wouldn't appeal to everyone. Therefore we decided not to include any aspects of a legal thriller within our film. This could also link to a political thriller such as 'The constant Gardener' where the hero/heroine must ensure the stability of the government, we also decided this would be too difficult to include.
A psychological thriller often shows the main character suffers from mental and emotional pain, rather than physical pain an example of this is 'Psycho'. As a group, we all quickly decided this would be an effective genre to use within our thriller film as our main theme. This will shock and disturb the audience, whilst creating a unique and unusual circumstance so it is not a typical storyline, for example murder. Here, we carefully began to plan our how we could adapt a psychological thriller to meet our demands with the equipment available, we looked at all different sections to do with a psychological film and decided a split personality disorder or schizophrenia would be the most effective if we could successful demonstrate this within our film to our audience. Therefore, lots of planning and research was necessary to make sure we understood these disorders, and eventually we picked schizophrenia as our main character can see a girl who is not really there.
