2. What is a thriller?
• Thrillers are a very popular genre of film,
this could be because of the suspense and
excitement that they bring to an audience.
Key elements of thrillers are tension,
dangerous situations, mystery all of which
are there to keep you on the edge of your
seat. There are many sub-genres of thrillers,
some of which are psychological thrillers,
crime thrillers and drama thriller. Our teaser
trailer is going to combine elements from a
mix of three of the different sub-genres.
• Drama Thriller example:
Psychological Thriller example:
Crime Thriller example:
3. Setting
• Films with this genre normally take place in quite urban areas such as cities, features
commonly seen are skyscrapers, lots of bold and bright lights and supercars. This tends to be
because of the thrill of being in a city with events and drama constantly happening, it also
makes for a great place for car chases or criminal activity because cities are where the money is
made – this links in with the sub-genre crime thriller. Colours typically seen in thrillers tend to
be greys, blues and greens which can also be liked with crime and psychological thrillers due to
the colours of police and ambulance sirens.
This is an example from the film Money
Monster, the whole film takes place in the city
centre within a TV studio inside a skyscraper.
I liked the way that they used the size of the
city as a feature of building suspense – the fact
that the whole city were in on the action. As
stated before the colour scheme is clearly very
industrial with blues and greens.
4. Character
• There are many types of characters that are commonly seen in thrillers and they rarely tend to be
good, some examples are criminals, assassins, psychotic individuals, con artists and innocent
victims caught in the drama. In the modern world these types of people get involved with all sorts
of trouble an real life action that takes place, I think this is part of the reason why audiences are
so drawn to thrillers as it’s a life they’re not familiar with therefore take interest in it.
• In the film Shutter Island the main character Teddy Daniels suffers with schizophrenia, in this
clip it shows a fraction of how Teddy’s mind works as he has a schizophrenia episode. Common in
psychological thrillers is the main character having a mental disorder as it brings a whole new
aspect of mystery and suspense as to what they will do next.
• https://youtu.be/lcZx6OCOTPc Characters usually have a rough and ready
look or the complete opposite in smart attire
such as suit and tie, this can often make them
stand out which is why the main character
tends to be a bit different.
5. Narrative
• Thrillers tend to have specific goals that they aim to reach by the end of the film, this could be
retrieving someone who got kidnapped, finding a key item or staying hidden from assassins for
example. The story is told through the protagonist point of view, this allows the audience to feel
closer to the main character and gives us an insight into what they are thinking. They may also
contain short clips of the antagonists’ POV which is usually a villain or enemy of some sort.
This clip shows 3 point of views, both the antagonist and
protagonist and a 3rd person view. Being able to see each view
it helps make the audience feel like they’re involved in the
action directly. When making our teaser trailer I think its
important to work out the balance between the POV’s,
however always giving most to the protagonist.
