Blog 2: Genre research

A thriller can be defined by the primary emotion it evokes: suspense and excitement. In short, if a movie is "exciting," it's a thriller. As the introduction to a vital anthology puts it:

Suspense is an essential feature of the thriller genre. It gives the audience a sense of fascination and excitement mixed with anxiety, anticipation, and tension. These plots develop from unpredictable, mysterious, and exciting events in the narrative that cause the viewer or reader to ponder the consequences of specific actions. Suspense is built to make the final moments, however brief, memorable. The suspense in the story keeps people reading or watching until it reaches its climax.

According to Steve Neale, every genre repeats to set audience expectations and alters some details to keep the audience's interest. This happens to Triller as well. Numerous subgenres and hybridity have existed since the 1930s.

The first crime thriller was named Charlie Chan Carries, produced in 1931 by Hamilton MacFadden. The story was mainly about Inspector Duff, a Scotland Yard detective and friend of Chan's, who is pursuing a murderer on an around-the-world voyage; so far, there have been murders in London, France, Italy, and Japan. While his ship is docked in Honolulu, the detective is shot and wounded by his quarry; though he survives, he is unable to continue with the cruise, and Chan takes his place instead. Eventually, Chan finds the killer before the next port of call.

Unfortunately, the film is now considered to be a lost film, with only a trailer known to survive.

After the thin man is a 1936 American murder mystery comedy film directed by W. S. Van Dyke. The story is about A guy named Robert who is having fun in a Chinese nightclub and sees a woman shoot another man. And starts to investigate. Then, two dudes find another dude murdered in his hotel room. And starts to investigate as well. And then a bunch of killings went on.

The film was nominated for an Oscar 1937 for Best Writing, Screenplay.

Rebecca is a 1940 American romantic psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was Hitchcock's first American project. The film is a gothic tale shot in black-and-white, mainly about Aashy, an awkward young woman, who is in Monte-Carlo, working for an elderly socialite, when she meets Maximilian (Maxim) de Winter. He is a wealthy widower whose wife, Rebecca, drowned in a sailboat accident. After a whirlwind courtship, the young woman and Maxim marry and settle at Manderley.

A thriller can be defined by the main emotion it evokes: suspense and excitement. In short, if a movie is "exciting," it's a thriller. As the introduction to a vital anthology puts it:

Those interested in the thriller genre are primarily youngsters and mid-ages. People who love stimulus scenes are mostly 12-60. Some Thriller movies are for men only. I mean, I’ve never seen girls talking about how cool the Saw was, cutting people in half where guts files all over the place, do they? As the idea of gender equilibrium has been merged into our lives, some thriller movies have gone much milder where girls can become tolerant of the content. People came here finding visual stimulation, enjoying solving cases, listening to a story, or sometimes merely seeing people suffer (@The SAW).

Thrillers are heavily script-based, so media, except for films, also dominate the genre. Books often provide an excellent story for cinema, and games are maneuverable films where players can experience the story.

What genres decide what audience filmmakers are expecting? This helps them to regulate the overall tonality. On the other hand, marketing guys have a clearer idea of the aim group; therefore, the advertisement way will be slightly different. People go to see films and expect certain content in a particular genre. If you are going to a comedy, you don’t want minions cutting people and blood spitting out like a fountain, and you don’t wish peaky blinders to start to fly around in the sky riding brooms and talk about the romance of love.

The Thriller genre has been hybridized a lot with other genres. The most common are detectives, horror thrillers, and action thrillers. Thriller movies can have elements of nearly all different genres. Sub-genres of Thrillers are often a result of genres fusing. Psychological focuses on the unstable psychological state of the characters inside the story; Mystery usually is connected to the crime genre; Techno is a conflict that takes place for or through Various forms of technology and Film Noir.

IT IS TIME FOR SOME FILM ANALYSIS

Brick and dune

Brick is a thriller, while Dune is a sci-fi movie. They are obviously from different genres. However, films have conventions.

Equilibrium and disequilibrium.

According to the idea of Tzvetan Todorov, every single story has an equilibrium to be broken and re-established. There must be a hero and a villain all the time to whatever extent. In the movie brick, the equilibrium is broken by Emily being killed, while in dune, the equilibrium is broken by the Harkonnens launching invasions on Atreides. The story’s climax is how the “hero” fights against the Disruption and achieves a new equilibrium. Both movies did now achieve a happy ending, as most traditional films might have. A new equilibrium established in brick was Brain uncovered the fact that Laura attended the murder of Emily while, in dune, Paul joined the Freedmen rather than defeating the emperor.

Colouring

It is not hard to see that both Bricks and Dune are cold colour based. This is to do with the tonality of the film.

Plots

Both films’ opening acts are essential throughout the story as enigmas. The whole story of brick is narrated around the death of Emily; however, the opening of the Dune acts as an element which affects Paul’s development throughout the stry and the plot development rather than being the mainstream.

Learnings from opening

The brick has a more traditional opening where the main character, Brain, is revealed and his symbolic code – leather shoes- are given directly to the audience to be memorised denotatively. We also have a direct message of the setting by looking at his clothing.

Dune, however, is more connotative in terms of opening. The opening of the Dune is more of a motive that acts as an enigma in the last story.

In terms of shots, the Brick is something I would look more into using close-ups. In contrast, Dune is a mix of different angles and provides more tension with extreme colouring.