research

Recently I have been researching into which types of thrillers and movies are most successful. I first looked at http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0410/Movie-Genres-With-The-Best-ROI.aspx#axzz1p1hJf8sR  to find the most profitable film genres. It compared each genres ROI (return on investment to see which films made the highest income. The genres were action and adventure, drama, romance and comedies, documentaries and horrors and thrillers. From this I then went onto imdb to look at the top 50 thrillers. Pulp fiction by Quentin tarantino was rated number 1 with more than half a million votes, the top ten seemed to mainly consist of films which were rated 18 and most of them seemed to be crime thrillers this was interesting and very pleasing as we focused our thriller on being a crime/physcological thriller.

I then looked at the top crime thrilers pulp fiction yet again came at no.1 with se7en and reservoir dogs following at no 2 and 3. http://www.flickchart.com/charts?genre=Crime+Thriller

I then looked at the top physcological thrillers. Silence of the lambs was at no 1 and it seemed that physcological thrillers had to have a crazy villian driving the story such as hanibal lecter or travis bickle from  martin scorcesse’s taxi driver.  http://listverse.com/2008/06/23/top-15-psychological-thrillers/

Finally to get a character basis I looked at afi top 100 heros and villlians on wikipedia tosee what people expect of a hero or villian. The top hero was Atticus Finch from  to  kill a mocking bird and  the top villian was hanibal lecter from the silence of the lambs. It seems the hero had to be a man with a strong sense of moral and justice who must over come a great evil to protect what he holds dear. The villians seem to be  men and women who may have once been good but have however become twisted and corrupted. It also seems that a film with a strong villian may not always have a good hero and vica vesra

The research was very helpful and although it may not be very representative however it has given me quite a few ideas on how to construct our opening and characters

Our idea for our thriller was a crime/mystery thriller about murders which are all in the form of suicides each of them occurring after a phone call. a young detective facing marital problems takes up the case and is thrusted into a twisted game with an unlikely killer with no motive.

We have been looking at the codes and conventions of a 'thriller' and in particular we have looked at other thriller openings, mainly to give us guidelines and ideas on our own idea.

I looked at zodiac (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBu8BdhUnmE


zodiac opening is brilliant as the audience hear hurdy gurdy man in the background while  a couple drive to lovers point on the 4th of july yet it is dark and we see dark figures in cars. which is very conventional for a thriller. it is a brilliant asynchronous scene. The car park becomes empty  and then a dark car pulls in and turns off its headlights  the couple looked worried. this creates suspense another code of thrillers, pulls away, a red herring,then another car pulls up and an officer comes out he is dark and mysterious yet there is a sense of reassurance with the officer he then ruthlessly takes out the teens. a big twist right at the beginning of the film.

I have also looked at se7en (1995)
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4thzyFFdvVc


Se7en also has a very good opening as we get these scary and eerie sounds in the background as we see the killer s hands work away at a collage . It consists of lots of extreme close ups and quick cuts which all help to give the scene a rather creepy and twisted feeling. It shows a lot without giving too much away as we see some photos of people who may be the killers victims. it then ends with the killer cut out the word GOD from the american dollar which says 'In God We Trust' and a singer says 'You got me closer to God' which makes the audience wonder whether the killings have something to do with Religion. the opening is brilliant as creates the right amount of tension and mystery within the viewer.

I also looked at many other thrillers such as:

• Disturbia
• Eagle Eye
• The bourne Identity
• The bourne supremacy
• Inception
• The dark knight
• Strangers on a train 
• Physco
• The man who knew too much
• Memento
• Insomnia
• Fight club
• Cape fear
• Phone booth

I finally looked at some other examples of as media studies thrillers

I looked at the 'Living Nightmare'as an example

it showed many example of thriller conventions such as low key lighting , suspenseful music, closeups and canted shots to show the twisted feel of the thriller. There is a dream like sequence which also creates a lot of mystery and enigma around what is going on 

In media studies we were issued the task of making a 2 minute opening clip for our own. A thriller according to Riddley Scott is a film or book which provides suspense, a plot twist and most of all create a thrill within the audience. We also took a look at the codes and conventions of a thriller, codes and  convention in films can be seen in two ways one being technical codes this through the camera work such as having a tight frame to suggest a character is trapped the second being subliminal codes such as seeing a character in white might suggest they are good and pure. conventions are basically stereotypes we expect in films suchas the irish character being a drunk such as a surprise twist, shady characters, dark setting. We split into groups mine being Aaron and Michael and had to come with our ideas. This was difficult as we all ha separate opinions on what the opening should be about. We finally came to a decision on our idea a crime/mystery thriller where we saw a murder being covered up as a suicide. We have hit a road block as miss told us we had to come up with the entire films idea, which we hadn’t thought about at first but I’ve come up with an idea which I’ll give to the group on monday