This document discusses how a student's thriller film opening incorporates conventions of the genre and represents social groups and issues. It notes that the opening establishes unease by disrupting equilibrium through a girl's kidnapping. It also uses the stereotypical thriller location of a dark forest. While some conventions like lighting couldn't be achieved, the opening provides thrills, a climax, and cliffhanger to allure to sequels. Key characters of a female protagonist and male antagonist are introduced. Social groups like gender and class are represented through damsel-in-distress and ransom tropes. The opening touches on cultural issues of women's safety and views of male violence.

1. How does your product use or
challenge conventions and how does
it represent social groups or issues?

2. When researching about Thrillers I came across a lot of stereotypes that a lot
the films follows. Some of the stereotypes include:
• The narrative usually begins with something disrupting the equilibrium, it
could some sort of mystery that needs answering or questions that need to
be asked this is a common occurrence in Thrillers as it puts the audience in
a state of uncomfortableness and feel ill. In my opening I managed to show
this stereotype, because there is something disrupting the current
equilibrium in this case, a girl walking, is disrupted because someone has
kidnapped her.
• Another stereotype includes, the locations of Thrillers. Stereotypically
thrillers are based in real life locations such as a dark, wet and dismal street
or tight closed areas for example. The way that I portrayed this was that the
intense part of the opening was filmed in the forest.
Although my opening follows a lot of stereotypes there are a lot of them that we
haven’t managed to match such as the lighting, this is due to us not having all
the equipment to help create low-key lighting.

3. Conventions are the significant aim and overall objective within the thriller genre is
to provide 'thrills', keeping the audience on edge with apprehension and
adrenaline as there is a build up to a climax.
Some Thrillers may end in cliff-hangers, which allures to the possibility of a sequel.
In my opening thriller the convention that we matched was the aim to provide
‘thrills’, with a cliff-hanger at the end of the opening and a climax (chase scene).
Another way that we have helped portray classic thriller conventions is that we
have introduced some key characters in the film for example the female
protagonist, the male antagonist.

4. Social groups can be presented in thrillers in completely different ways such as Genders
and Age.
Both genders tend to be used within different thrillers although certain roles are often
played by one gender, in relation to my thriller the villain is male and the victim or damsel in
distress is a women, as female characters are stereotypically known for being weaker and
more vulnerable than men, this is why we chose to use characters this way.
Some other social groups include Disability, and Class. Class is normally used when
money needs to be involved. Money is normally a sub-narrative storyline within some
Thriller films. People apart of the higher classes are normally kidnapped by people from
lower classes for ransom (money). This is shown in many thrillers.

5. There are many different types of social issues including:
Political, Historical Social. Economical and Cultural.
My opening involves social and cultural issues such as women
safety issues and how men are viewed to be violent and take
advantage of females.
Many thrillers and other genres try to show many different social
issues across in their films as it helps them reach a larger
audience and help them get a direct message across to the
audience.