1. https://www.mindmeister.com/219500572/codes-and-conventions-of-a-thriller-film
Narrative and stylistic codes and conventions of different film genres.
Detailed examples to illustrate points.
Action Film: Live free or Die Hard, Venom
Thriller Film: Would you rather, Seven
Talk about the typical parts of the genre’s and the explain the Narrative codes of this genre
(What they talk about and how the story goes)
Stylistic Codes: Camera techniques,
Action filmTypical parts of the genre:
Violence in the films, gun, fighting scenes. Main characters motivation for his/her actions
(do this for both good and bad guy/girl on film and express reasons for his/her actions)
Thriller film Typical parts of genre:
Slow paced logical thinking parts of film, explain the typical parts of how they like to dig into
the audience head and make them think. Can also explain how thrillers can also make you
think that what is happening in the filmcan happen in real life because they can be realistic.
Things to talk about:
Talk about the costumes of the characters and how they match up with the characters in
the genre and also the things they say.
Compare venom and die hard scenes that match the action genre.
Also compare the thriller scenes for Would you rather and seven that match the thriller
genre.
Venom & Die Hard first fight scene that introduces the main character’s strength.
The first scene that introduces Venom’s strength and abilities is one of the first fights that
he has. It shows the audience the power that Venom has.
You can see that they do the same for Die Hard 4 with John’s first fight scene when he’s
having a shootout against a group of people.
The reason they do this is to show the audience what power that the main characters
possess along with their skill.
Venom and Die Hard emotional side to show us what the main characters have to loose
and what they can use as more motivation to fight on and win.
2. To show the main character’s vulnerabilities and show the audience what they have to loose
and what keeps them fighting through everything, the film shows what the main characters
hold most closely to their heart. For this instant in Venom they show you that he has a
career and the love of his life to loose.
For Die Hard it shows us the that John has his daughter to lose as well as his ex-wife
For a thriller film, they like to focus on the style of the characters and the way they act, re-
act and think.
How you can tell this is with crime thrillers, where characters are faced with really tough
choices and questions that you rarely see in real life but are still possible.
A good example of this is with would you rather, where people are given two choices that
are equally as bad as the other. In would you rather one of the choices that are given is for
someone to either keep whipping a guy as hard as he can cause extreme pain but not a high
possibility of death, or the character choose to repeatedly stab a disabled woman in the leg
who can’t feel the pain, but runs a high possibility of death.
It’s those type of choices that the filmfocuses on to express the struggle and mental battle
the characters can have.
The Film Se7en has a similar way of showing that it is a thriller with the choices of a
character by giving the detective a hard choice to make. To choose if the detective wants to
seek revenge whilst the killer is confessing to murdering his wife and unborn child, or he
could listen to his partner and put the gun down and bring the killer to the justice that the
law has to offer.
https://hannahb93.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/analysing-thriller-filmstrailers-se7en/
http://georgiamayprestidgemediaas.blogspot.com/2014/11/thriller-genre-analysis-se7en-
1995.html
3. Narrative Codes:
One thing that all action films have in common is the intense drama it has in its action
scenes; they add a narrative style to draw in the audience to have sympathy or relate to the
main character in some way. A good example of this is with Venom, Eddie has everything in
life that he could ever want, the perfect woman, perfect home and job, but he loses it all.
This can relate to many people who have ever lost something in their life.
Another example is when Eddie first feels and gets a taste of Venom’s power. He gets a big
shock when this black slimy substance appears from nowhere from his body and shows for
the first time the power it gives Eddie.
This is to show the audience that the main character has been given a great power that he
now has to get used to and figure out how to use.
A similar aspect can be seen with Die Hard.
The character John who currently lives a normal life, a divorced man with two children is
living his life as he normally does. But when he has to go and pick up a criminal hacker, but
4. things go very wrong when the hacker is tried to be killed. The it introduces us to the main
character’s strengths like it also did in Venom, this shows us Johns strength when it comes
to gun fights and what skills we expect to see from John.
What both of these also do is show us that when a bigger battle happens with the “big bad
boss” that that bad guy/woman must be very powerful if he/she is giving our main character
a battle of his/her life.
Codes & Conventions
For the sound of aspect of the action genre the music is normally high intense music that
follows with a lot of gun shots, running, screaming, car sounds and other sound effects.
Costumes, the actors normally wear some expensive clothing to show they are a powerful
character or they could have your everyday normal guy/girl clothing to show that their
appearance may deceive you and make you think they are a normal person but once they’re
true characters revealed then they turn out to be a badass
The setting of a lot of action films are set in a busy city, built up urban areas or specific
locations like skyscrapers, underground tunnels, police stations ect.
For editing there can be quite a lot of editing involved including sound effects, adding CGI
for explosions ect,
Camera Shots. These tend to be very fast passed shots in action films to show intenisity and
show a lot is happening during the scenes, they include close ups to show emotions,
establishing shots to show where the action is taking place or is about to take place and
usually those are taken from helicopters. Tracking shots are also very common when there
are chase scenes so that is captures and makes the audience fell apart of the chase.
The themes are your normal, good vs bad, family issues, revenge, death, car chases and gun
fights.
Genre Choice 2: Thrillers.
Codes & conventions
Feelings thrillers create:
Excitement, suspense, anticipation, tension, uncertainty/.
Narrative. A genuine thriller is a film that relentlessly pursues a single minded goal during
the film and that is to provide the thrills that leave an audience on the edge of their seats as
the plot of the film expands and builds up to the films climax. These qualities are usually
5. raised when a main character is placed in a life or death or other threatening situation a
mystery, dangerous situation for the character to escape from that seems impossible.
The main character’s life is threatened usually because he/she is unsuspecting or
unknowingly involved in a dangerous, potentially deadly, threatening situation.
The main plot of a thriller is to have the characters involved come into conflict with one
another, him/herself or other outside forces.
Themes: Terrorism, political conspiracy, provide better client interaction, psychological
mind games, supernatural events, crime, spies, chase, suspense, assassination.
Charters: Convicts, soldiers, spies, law enforcement, stalkers, criminals, assassins, innocent
citizens that get dragged into danger, psychotic characters, prison inmates.
Would you Rather Mis-En-Scene.
