Research into convections of a thriller movie-Miss Miller

Convections of a thriller movie
5/10/12
Vasil Nikolov

What is a convection? A convection is the common feature one can relate to the specific genre of the movie. For example it is convectional for a thriller movie to have a house in a rural are with no other housing to surround it.

Thriller is a genre of film that uses: suspense, shock and surprise as the main elements to intreague their audience.

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The film which I will use as an example is called "Psycho" by Alfred Hitchcock. We shall start with the first point being that one of the convections of a thriller is that the character that dies is a woman. Female characters are shown in thriller films as they can be easily portrayed as weak and vulnerable to situations where there is little chance of escape. In our film, the character is taking a shower (Situation in which there is no escape from an attack). This would also make the audience relate to her as they also use showers at home. The audience would also build a warm relationship as females usually are portrayed as sweet and innocent. They would also feel calm as they would see a natural setting of a woman taking a shower.

A couple of seconds after that, we see the female being attacked. The moment the audience see the scene where she is stabbed, they would feel quite shocked as they would not have expected to see the main character being killed in the beginning of the film. This is highly unconventional to a thriller film as the main character is usually either killed or saved in the last part of the film. However, with "Psycho", Hitchcock decided to surprise his audience by killing his main character in the beginning of the film. At the time, his audience was truly shocked as they never expected for a similar change to happen in a thriller film. They were used to the common idea, that the main character is always in danger, but not killed until the end of the film.

Thrillers mostly take place in ordinary suburbs/cities (In psycho, the film takes place in a house in the city). Sometimes they are being shot in military areas or deserts (Resident Evil). This would be unconventional as thrillers are usually shot in rural areas in order to relate to the audience. The audience itself would feel scared when they watch the film as they also live in apartments in cities and would not want to have a maniac in their house. 

Sound and editing plays a big part in thriller movies as the effect of the two features is what makes an audience want to watch a thriller again and again. For example in Jaws, the audience did not see much of the shark, however the music that was used in the film was and still is able to mack and audience jump. In Psycho, there was no music when the heroine was taking a shower and then when she was attacked, the music was synchronised with the stabbing from the knife. This way the audience would be shocked (and maybe jump in their seats) as they would be used to the silence and then they would be suddenly surprised by the loud music and the attack on the character. By adding eerie music to a quiet scene, the audience would start to feel scared as there is an increase in the amount of suspense.

Editing is also important as the audience must be able to watch the film from different camera angles without noticing. Jump cuts are very convectional for films in this era as they are used mostly in title sequences. The jump cut type of editing is used as there is a multiple things happening in the same time that we are unaware of, these cuts fill them and make the scene or continuous and flowing.

The lighting at this point is a conventional feature as in thrillers, low key lighting leads to shadowing the characters, creating an enigma for the audience as the killer is not shown. The effect show above is when she opens the curtains and finds him with a knife. This way the audience would want to find out who he is and why did he kill the female in the first place. This way an enigma occurs, causing the audience to feel agitated to see what will happen next.

Another convection of the thriller is the weapon used by the killer. In the scene above, the killer is holding a standard kitchen knife. In thriller films, domestic weapons are used in order to kill their target. Similar weapons are used in order to shock their audience that normal kitchen appliances are dangerous in the wrong hands. This is why the audience would feel scared when they see the killer, holding the knife as knifes also create more blood spillage due to being long and wide.

My last point is that while the killer is attacking the main character, the pace would speed up which when its an action packet scene like this one, gives a sense of adrenaline is given to the audience, causing a sense of fear as well. This is conventional to a thriller movie as the audience would correctly react to the scene they will see. In a thriller, the storyline always tends to be a mystery, there will most properly be an enigma presents which will run throughout the thriller film and it would be answered at the end and it by the antagonist or protagonist.