Researching your chosen Genre

Thriller (psychological)

Analysing Genre- What is a psychological thriller?

A psychological thriller is a sub-genre that branches of from the genre of ‘thriller’. It is known as ‘psychological’ because of the way it can be quite disturbing to the audience watching it, is based around psychological manipulation and can rise questions as to what is, or is not, real. This genre of film can also be based around the relationships between characters as well. 

Quite a lot of characters in films have got psychological problems.  They have a heavy focus on the unstable emotional states of characters and can have a lot of mystery and twists to them. They look at many issues such as paranormal activity and other ‘scary’ elements such a stalkers, murderers etc. 

Thrillers are quite different to other genres such a comedy and romance because many people can feel intimidated and nervous and don’t find them enjoyable whereas most people can ‘have a laugh’ with a comedy. 
The genre thriller can also be mixed about with other genres such as sci-fi, horror and romance. 

Key elements/themes

      Ghosts- ‘Paranormal Activity’ ‘The Others’

      Psychological- ‘Shutter Island’

      Action - ‘The Fast and the Furious’

      Conspiracy- ‘The da Vinci Code’

      Crime- ‘Seven’

      Techno- ‘irobot’

Iconography

Thrillers can be set during all types of times meaning the iconography  can vary quite a lot. In our modern age when many people have the fear of cyber stalking or having their identities stolen, technological iconography is common. For example, to portray the 2000’s, there would be mobile phones, iPods, laptops, CCTV etc.

Characters and narrative

By looking at ‘thrillers’ my group and I discovered how they can vary quite a lot. The target audience is aimed towards teenagers from the age of 13 and upward. We think this is a suitable because our film is supposed to be relatively ‘scary’ and we think it would not be suitable for children under that age because it might be too scary for them. They also might not be able to understand the plot as because it has twists in it. There are also shadows in thrillers and dark corners and heavy breathing in thrillers so we decided to add a few elements of those into our first 2 minutes. A lot of psychological thrillers are based around a house and when it comes to ghost stories, it’s either the house that’s haunted or someone that lives there. The type of setting for a film like this would maybe have an establishing shot of the house and sometimes there might be a prologue narrative. The camera angles normally have quite a lot of close up to extreme close up shots to show that something is significant. In thrillers there are normally quite a lot of POV shots going on to give the audience an idea of what they are going through because they are normally based around an individual.

Mise-en-scene is also used in thrillers as well to give the audience information on what might happen and to add effect to the film. It also creates a mood for a scene for example, beige/yellow colours usually indicate that it set a long time ago and blue/grey usually indicates coldness. Costume/clothing also helps to set the scene because fashion changes and certain clothes are linked to a specific era. In the first two minutes of films there is usually background music playing to set the mood of what time of film it is going to be.

Narrative structure

Many genres have a typical storyline to them and for thrillers, it is usually based around one person on some sort of mission and while they try to complete their mission, there are always obstacles that get in the way of this happening but it ends alright in the end- mostly. In a psychological thriller, this narrative structure would take the form of the hero(ine) being on a mission to ridding themselves of a stalker / someone playing mind games with them and not succeeding / nearly getting killed many times until they are helped / kill the villain themselves.

Stock characters

A stock character is an emphasised character that represents a stereotypical personality usually portrayed in that specific genre. Depending on the type of thriller, it can range from a muscly, strong and handsome man to just an ordinary person. The ordinary person is normally the personality portrayed in psychological thrillers such as ‘Paranormal Activity’.  The man that is muscly etc. is usually the stock character in action thrillers; mostly spies or police officers that are high up in their job and have been sent on missions. There is normally always a killer as well for psychological thrillers. I have noticed that the main character is often female in the psychological thriller, and usually of the 'ordinary' stereotype. This is so the audience can relate to them and also so they feel that what the character is going through could happen to anyone. This is the case in our film.

Analysing genre - our techniques

Setting

The setting of our first two minutes is quite stereotypical of our genre because we’ve set it in the house where our person gets kidnapped. The house is supposed to be where the girl lives which add a thrill to it as most people don’t get kidnapped from their own homes. It is set in different rooms of the house and that shows how the two sisters are so different as the mise-en-scene reflects their personalities.

Costume

Due to the fact that there will be an age difference, we want to distinguish this by dressing the younger sister up in clothes that don’t coordinate well together because at that age, children aren’t that bothered. For the older sister, we will have her in fashionable clothes as the way you look can often reflect who you are and she is going to be quite a popular person.

 Lighting

To distinguish the difference between the times, we decided to put a beige/yellow filter on the lens of the camera to add an old effect to it. As well as this, we will have a light on in the porch to show the silhouette of the man who kidnaps the girl.

Props

We will be using props such as textbooks and exercise books to emphasise how the older sister was revising and didn’t want to play. We will also be using a table where the younger sister will hide and this will enhance the POV shots.

This is a two shot that emphasises the children’s terror and fear. The darkness also portrays negativity. The lighting and two shot work really very together to create a mood.
 

This is an establishing shot of the house that the film is set. It is also dark and foggy to show how something bad with happen here.

 

This is another two shot but there is a distance between the characters showing that they are not close because they’re at opposite ends of the frame. This shot also shows the type of clothes they wore in 1945 and the way the rooms used to be decorated.