By Jack Campbell

1. Music used in crime-
thrillers
JACK CAMPBELL

2. What is a crime thriller?
 The description Wikipedia gives for a crime thriller is :
 A crime- thriller provides the sudden rush of excitement, and
exhilaration that drive the narrative, sometimes subtly with peaks
and lulls, sometimes at a constant, breakneck pace. It keeps the
audience on the "edge of their seats", akin to a sensation of
hanging from a cliff, as the plot builds towards a climax. Literary
devices such as red herrings, plot twists, and cliffhangers are used
extensively. A thriller is usually a villain-driven plot, whereby he or
she presents obstacles that the protagonist must overcome.

3. Soundtrack
 Soundtrack and music is a common convention of all
short films for the simple reason that there is only a small
amount of time to convey a story and the use of music
greatly aids this and allows the producer to create a
mood and feel that might not be possible by using the
conventions of feature films, which have a much longer
run time of up to 1 hour and considerably more.

4. Short films which have a soundtrack
This short film uses a very slow, moving violin piece as well as
a melancholic, moody piano piece to convey the sad
emotions of a couple who have broken up. The music is
accompoined by a spoken dialogue, which needs the
music to add more emotion and sensualtiy to the scene.
The titles are accompanied by an accoustic guitar song
which has lyrics that relate to the sadness of break up.

5. More examples
This futuristic and high budget short film
features lots of diagetic robot sounds
and spaceship whooshes as well as a
futuristic and robotic soundtrack that fits
in with the conventions of the short film.
This short film has no dialogue.
This short love film uses a mixture of sad
strings and happy acoustic guitar music
to match the narrative on screen, This
film does feature some dialogue which
works well in conjunction with the
narrative on screen.

6. Conventions
 The short films that I analysed:
 All contained soundtracks that matched the narrative
on screen.
 Used a variety of diagetic and non diagetic sounds
 Used a comination of background 'mood' music and
recorded music

7. A look at the soundtracks of some
famous crime/ thriller films
 Although I am creating a short film, I thought it would be useful to analyse
the music used in several famous crime and thriller films as this would give
me an inclination as to what type of music I should use in my short film.
The score to Stephen King's film
Misery is made up of a typical
thriller piece- klanky keyboard
playing and strings to show
suspense as well as sharp, slow
piano playing after the 'climax'.
I could use a piece similar to this,
however I would prefer a more
industrial and 'criminal' sound.

8. Further examples
The 2015 film 'Furious 7' uses a custom made
score of heavy syntheiser beats, drum loops,
strings, bass and keyboards to create a
soundtrack that ranges from tense to sad to
exciting depending on the on screen action