GCSE Media Studies analysis of the thriller genre

1. GENERIC CODES AND
CONVENTIONS
By Lucy Pritchard

2. THRILLER
• Low key lighting
• Quick cuts
• Shadows
• Tension music
• Changes in the angles of shots
• Diegetic sound of breathing
• Black and white shots
• Montage of shots
• Protagonist is being dictated to by the antagonist

3. CHARACTER
• The protagonist (hero) of the movie tends to be a strong-willed male who
seeks to regain the equilibrium. In our film the protagonist role is split
across two girls. They are young school girls and so are quite opposite to
the convention of the film genre.
• The antagonist (villain) of the movie tends to want to get revenge on the
protagonist from a previous event. The antagonist can sometimes have a
hidden identity that the audience discover as the movie goes on. In our
film the antagonist is a mysterious male.

4. SETTING
• The setting of a thriller film tends to give a lot away as to what the film is
going to be like and helps the film to add tension in slight ways. For
example, if a thriller film was set in a house, you would expect certain
things to happen.
• Our film is set in a school but I don’t think this will give much away as to
what will happen as most films set in a school don’t tend to be thrillers.
Therefore perhaps our film doesn’t come across as a very conventional
thriller film but then that could be what sets it aside is the fact that there
are no other films like it.

5. SOUNDTRACK
• A convention of sound in thriller is that it is tension building and creates
suspense.
• In our film we use the soundtrack in the background to set the mood and
give a clear indication of what kind of thing is coming up next. For
example, when leading up to a key part of the film there will be tension
building music to add to the effect of the film. The music can be used to
control the audiences emotions for example, tension building music would
be to make the audience feel scared.

6. CAMERA MOVEMENT
• A convention of camera movement in the thriller genre is that there are
quick cuts and changes in angle of shots.
• In our films a variety of different angled shots and quick cuts are used and
therefore this makes it come under the category of a thriller film. There
are several changes in angles in our shots for the film which makes the film
a little bit more interesting simply because they are different and each give
off contrasting moods.

7. EDITING
• A convention of editing in thriller movies is a montage of shots.
• This is true to our film as well as our film is composed of several shots all
put together in order to make the film flow well but also keeping the idea
of different scenes.