Research of the Thriller genre

For our media project we chose the Thriller genre. Our idea is focused around a detective and a serial killer he is chasing. The film will focus on the battle him and the serial killer have, ruining his marriage and his social life in the process. The victims also feature in our media text with a series of flash backs from the serial killer before and during the murders, and the detective afterwards at the crime scene.

We first looked at films like 'Se7en' and 'The Dark Knight' as they are very popular Thriller films.

We soon released however that the Thriller genre encompasses a massive spectrum of films such as, suspense thrillers, action or adventure thrillers or sci-fi thrillers such as alien. these are just a few of the genres that Thrillers can become, so choosing the right film to take notes a draw inspiration from was difficult. Films like 'Vertigo'and 'Friday the 13th' were others we originally looked at but didn’t meet our sub genre. We did however learn a lot about how to build suspense up successfully with the use of dramatic music and a varying length of edit.

As our Thriller was a Horror/Detective Thriller we had some trouble locating similar films we did however find to on you tube, these were 'Transfixed Theatrical' and 'Inspector X'.

We finally settled on a few ideas for the general feel of our film. We decided that our opening sequence should feature low key lighting creating a very dark and eerie effect. Hiding the serial killers face is also a priority as this builds up tension in the audience as he remains anonymous. High tension music will also feature this is the one thing all thriller films have in common, this builds up the suspense and tension in a scene. Like most other thrillers there is high emphasis on the silent parts of the films, as this also creates a sinister effect.