Detective films revolve around the protagonist as a detective with a sceptical, aloof and intellectual aggressive investigator, in contrast to the endangered hero or heroine, who is seen to scared and in shock throughout the narrative. Hence, the narrative revolves around the detective’s investigation into a ‘mystery’ e.g. a character being endangered (refer to above). The detective investigates clues, the characters of the people involved and the psychology of the criminal, which all help to build tension and suspense; the single minded goal of a thriller. The narrative conventions of a courtroom drama or action taking place in a ‘police station’ are widespread to these films.
In relation to the origins of thriller films, the first Hollywood films such as Westerns were based around inexplicable murders and strange happenings and these augmented the need to keep audiences engrossed in the narrative, which was failing to do so in the 1900s, as vaudeville and theatre takings in Hollywood dropped. Hence, the ability of the director of photography as well as the producer to create visually and scripted based tension, suspense, respectively, gave rise to the thriller genre. This together with the Victorians increasing fascination with the explanations of the unknown and ghosts produced a thriller genre.
Generalising, all three sub genres collated, give a narrative of a character whose life is threatened and where escape seems impossible. The tension and suspense created usually derives from the main protagonist inadvertently involved in a dangerous plot. However, resolution is always the key of the directors mind, where the anti-hero is sentenced in the form of death or imprisonment and hence, a structure theory is sustained. This relates to Tzetevan Todorov’s structure theory of an equilibrium start, where the character is revealed happily, a interruption to the narrative, where the anti-hero menaces the hero or heroine and a resolution with a exultant ending for the hero/heroine. Thrillers exist in also hybrid genres as well as sub-genres, such as suspense, sci-fi, crime, western, film noir, romantic-comedy, horror, erotic, and legal thrillers. Hence, the modern society have a huge range of films to ascertain pleasure from. Thrillers’ narrative usually concentrate on the genre of the film whether it be romantic thrillers with the narrative of a romantic triangle of love to terrorism narratives in legal thrillers.
Subsequently, the types of characters common to the anti-hero role are convicts, criminals, stalkers, assassins, losers, prison inmates, psychotic individuals, terrorists, cops, cons, fugitives etc. However, the hero is habitually played by a ‘innocent victim’ where the audience can easily relate to and share the tension and shock experienced to that character. Thus, we can affirm thriller films help to make audiences mentally implicated in the narrative, with the key successful codes of an opening sequence. These key codes are shock and surprise, presenting a problem e.g.. murder, asking a question e.g.. whose the killer? and typical generic conventions as below. These conventions involve a battle, chase, murder, guns, knives, loud, fast pace musical beats, masks and black colours to connotate depression and tension towards the audience. Throughout the last twenty years in the Hollywood industry, the success of thriller films has risen with the ‘hit’ films such as ‘Face Off’ (1998), Se7en (1995), Along came a spider (2000) and many others.
Having done this research, I feel that I am in a strong position to fulfil the brief as I have discovered what the typical narrative of a thriller is and how to create tension and shock; the single minded goal of a thriller, towards the audience which is executed by the use of conventions. I feel that I can assertively create a thriller opening sequence, established on the structure theory and this research.