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The Forest section of "Shutter Island"

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Flashbacks and visions are used in thrillers such as "Shutter Island" to create confusion and give context

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No one is present during the fight scenes between the Joker and Batman in Gotham City

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Contrasting dark scenes with the bright flashbacks

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... has a similar appearance to the detectives in Seven

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The Detective...

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Limiting the use of lighting to create mystery

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Trashed room

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Similar character in "The Ring"

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Blood Red Ribbon

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Adhering to conventions - The costume of Charlotte Adams

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"The Box" scene - the soundtrack here influenced my own piece

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'"Estranged and unpredictable antagonist" -

The Joker, The Dark Knight

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Representation of Women in "The Others"

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Commonly, Thrillers follow a chronological structure, but I wanted to challenge this convention by using flashbacks and ordering the scenes in a different way. The sequence begins at night, and then through flashbacks, cuts to dusk in an entirely different location. This helps to create confusion as to what happened when and keeps the audience engage, and the brief flashbacks that appear further enhance this effect, as they appear for a brief time only. Furthermore, this links to lighting, in that the scenes are mostly dark yet the flashbacks are a bright white, presenting the Binary Opposites theme of "Light Vs. Dark" that is conventional in thrillers.

General features of thrillers as a whole include the use of suspense, tension and excitement, all of which I intended to create in my opening sequence, through narrative and editing. The forest section creates a sense of tension through action and the street section creates suspense through mystery.

Thrillers typically have fast paced editing to heighten the suspense created in the scene, however I decided to begin with slow-paced editing and then switch to a faster pace in conjunction with a developing soundtrack. The slow pace at the beginning would give time for the audience to take in the significance of the location and costumes, similar to my studied scene in "Seven", before the action begins. This allows the tension and suspense to be controlled and allows for conventions to be developed.

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From my audience research I found that the plot of thrillers was preferred to be complex - typically, horror films do not have complicated plots, creating a distinction immediately and adhering to a simple convention of similar real media prodcuts. The complex plot of leaving many ends untied in the opening sequence sets the product up for many twists and turns, similar to my inspiration films, "Seven" and "Shutter Island".

My costumes are such that on the most part they utilise conventions but some of the characters costumes develop them - for instance, the protagonist, the Detective, is dressed in a long black coat and black trousers - typically, black would be associated with "evil" in thriller films, which hence creates connotations of mystery and isolation in character and even fear, yet by seeing his face we contrast this idea, and the audience is left unsure of his moral identity, allowing for character and plot development and developing conventions. The costume itself is similar to that of the Detective in "Seven".

By contrast, the "Shades" challenge thriller conventions in some aspects. Although they are dressed in all black too, connoting the same things as the Detecive's costume, their faces are covered, revealing nothing about their identity or character. However, they are almost "spiritual" characters who teleport across the forest, and there appears to be more than one identical shade (see images) - this doesn't allow for character compariosns as a whole like with the Detective, the closest character would be the Dementors from Harry Potter, not typically a thriller, and so by incorporating them into my product allows me to challenge some conventions whilst utilising the conventions needed to distinguish my product as a thriller.

Finally, Charlotte Adams' costume uses thriller conventions. It was intended to present her as out of her era, with a gown-like costume, to create an eerie effect, similar to that of the children in Shutter Island, and the girl in Orphan and the Ring. The costume is thought-provoking, making the audience wonder why she is wearing that costume, at night, in the middle of a street - abnormality is a key convention of thrillers.

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Fast paced section - typical of thrillers

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The Shades

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My media product is set in three distinctive locations: an urban, dark, eerily lit and deserted street at night, a forest at dusk and a darkened, trashed room covered in notes and images. The misé-en-scene and lighting in each of these individual locations allows for many genre matches and parallels to be drawn with real media products.

Firstly, the abandoned and eerie street location is typical of suspenseful segments of thrillers such as "The Dark Knight", where the streets of Gotham City are full of debris and not a single person is present, creating a perhaps unnatural feel that will trigger the thought processes of the audience, as to why there is no one present, using a convention of media products. Shown below is a screenshot of a part of this scene in my thriller.

My thriller is a pyschological thriller, and makes use of the conventions of similar media products such as "Seven" and "Shutter Island". The forest segment, shown in a separate image, takes inspiration from it's counterpart in Shutter Island, also pictured to show visual similarities. In both scenes, a sense of entrapment, isolation and disoreintation is created as the audience and character lose their sense of direction, and each of these aspects are typical conventions of the genre as a whole. In this section I also implement the Shade character (see Characters) that the camera picks up in the background, shown in the screen-shot of the high-angle shot. This adds to the pyschological effect as the audience knows something is there but is not that aware of it. Furthermore, the threat of violence builds more suspense than violence itself, typical in thrillers, yet some props are used to create connotations of blood and violence, such as the blood red ribbon, as these aspects are still important in thrillers. This also helps to distinguish my film as a thriller, and not a horror, by adhering to these conventions.

The trashed room at the end adds to the mystery created by the preceding scenes, provoking the audiences thoughts as to what is actually going on, and sets the tone for the scenes to follow. It could be compared to any scene in thrillers where the character wakes up shocked, such as Bourne, Seven and Skyfall.

Each of these locations adheres to typical thriller conventions regarding Lighting. It was noticed that thrillers, particularly pyschological ones, limit the use of lighting on characters to create a sense of mystery around them and to not give much away about their character, allowing for binary opposites to be established: something I have included in my own thriller.

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In my research I looked at 3 scenes from Thrillers to observe what conventions were used. In "Seven", I focused on the use of sound, and how prolonged periods of silence were used juxtaposed with intermittent loud crashes to build suspense in the scene. This led to me utilising these features in my own thriller, for instance the periods of silence when the Detective picks up the ribbon could be compared to the period of silence when the Detective is opening "The Box", and the period of silence before the ending entrapment scene has a similar soundtrack to the showdown at the end of Seven. I learned that a focus on non-diegetic sound was prominent, with very little actual sound from the scene itself, to help build suspense.This helped to intensify the piece at this point and create varying moods throughout the scene.

I also looked at "The Others" for representation of women in Thrillers, which was that females were generally portrayed as weaker and more vulnerable. This led to me making the decision that any female in my product would be portrayed as submissive and vulnerable. I hence decided to use a younger girl to enhance this vulnerability. Lastly I looked at "The Dark Knight" for portrayal of the antagonist, in which I studied the Joker as a character, and learned that typically thrillers villains were estranged and unpredictable (as in Seven also). I wanted my thriller to develop this convention by making the antagonist so passive that were in fact more threatening and more unpredictable.

Hence, overall I planned to match and use the conventions of thrillers that I had discovered from my research in my media product, yet develop and challenge conventions to some extent to make my product unique but still conventional.