section 1: Background to the thriller genre

A typical Thriller:
Blood, suspence, fight scenes, tension, plot twists, murders, chase scenes, psychological, detectives, clues, predictable.

Some directers who do thrillers are Hitchcock and Coen brothers.

Sone thriller movies are: Seven, Red eye, Silence of the lambs, Bourne identity, Bank job etc.

The thriller Seven.
Narrative: It is a typical thriller about crime and investigation. It is about the seven deadly sins, 7 days of retierments, 7 days of the week and a countdown of seven days till death. The film is all about time.

Setting: has many crime scenes. It is all very dark and gloomy. The weather is depressing and the weather represents the tone of the film and how it is going to be. The start links to the end.

Style: It is a very edgy film and suspencefull and uncomfortable. The music is very repetative and sounds like a heart beat at the start of the clip and its scarey.
"eyes- window to your soul"

Titles:
Child like writing and flashing subliminal images at the start in the graphics. darkness, good and evil, black and white, race, purity. There are horrible pictures so give an insight of the killer and what he is like. Extreme closeups to empthasis this and one of the book to show the killer is educational and it is about religion. when he cuts his finger tips off this is to make the character onomonous and makes us think who is it? It is about mutiliation and the killer could be obsessed with sacred. The colours are reddness, blood, death, anger and love. ghosting it added in the film to make it feel more freaky when one frame overlaps another.

Characters:
Both characters Mills and Summerset are both detectives but have very different lifestyles and different personalities. There is alot of opposition conflict. Summerset does not have a wife anymore and mills does. mills is a family man. Summerset is an old man whereas mills is a lot younger. Summerset is a black man and mills is a white man. Summerset is older and has more experience on the job and mills is young and has less experience. Summerset dresses more formal then Mills and there is also a father and son relationship shown between then in the film.

Seven is a successfull thriller because it has all the elements of what a thriller should have. Such as the style of the film makes you feel on edge and uncomfortable throughout the narrative and its suspencefull. The characters are what you exspect them to be, very different but with similaties in some ways. For example they are both detectives but have very different lifestyles and personalities. The narrattive is very typical. It is about clues and murders, suspence and investigating.

Theories for Thrillers

GK Chesterton: His theory says that thrillers try to expose 'the poetry of modern life' which basically means that he thinks that the world we live in is drab and mundane and thrillers offer a situation where the normal becomes extraordinary. This creates excitement for the audience as it opens the possibility of finding adventure in everyday life. This separates the genre from others as they are already set in exotic places.

Northrop Frye: His theory builds on Chesterton's idea of the normal being extraordinary as he says the hero is usually 'one of us' a normal person who is forced to become a hero through the circumstances. This usually means that as an audience it is easier to relate to them. His theory also states that we are happy to believe in the reality of thrillers because according to Frye they exist similarly to Romance. He explains 'the hero of romance moves in a world which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended.' The thriller changes the romantic setting of the enchanted forest for the modern city.

John Cawelti: Cawelti's theory combines the ideas of the two above saying that thrillers transforms the city 'from a modern centre of commerce, industry and science into a place of enchantment and mystery'. This is introduced by something strange,unusual happening in the everyday world.

W H Matthews: Matthews theory is is one that describes most thrillers. His work is a textbook on how to design mazes but it can be applied to thrillers, it should be complex, so the solution does not come too easily or quickly, and it should be possible to reach then end by deduction and strategy rather than just trial and error. This shows the thriller narrative but also suggests that the audience gain pleasure from prolonging the journey rather than solving it all quickly.

Pascal Bonitzer: His theory says that in thrillers we only get a partial vision, that we are allowed to see so much but what we don't see is as important or more important that what we actually do see. These are the things that compel us to keep watching the film as the answers might just lie around the corner. This theory says that the narrative of a thriller links with the metaphor and an actual labyrinth like what W H Matthews theory says. This links with the answers being around the corner, as this could apply in an actual maze. It is worth considering how much actual mazes do appear in thrillers like 'The shining (1980)' and 'The third man (1949)' being two examples. Bonitzer also says that the idea of a thriller, like a maze, could go on forever as out view is at least partially blocked, and it is also confining allowing minimal movement. This means the labyrinth and the thriller becomes an 'unlimited prison'. Suspense adds to this and needing to meet a deadline like to catch a killer or before something horrific happens, can create a maze anywhere.

Lars Ole Saurberg: Saurbergs theory identifies two ways suspense works to pull the audience completely different ways. Concealment and protraction. Conclealment is where something is deliberately hid from the audience like the killers identity. Protraction however in the deliberate delaying of a suspended outcome. This is done for films like in Golfinger (1964) when there is a countdown a bomb explosion.

Noel Carroll: Noel carroll's theory is based on a question-answer model. He indentifies the importance of questions within a thriller narrative which the audience will wair in suspense for. To create suspence he says the questions must be clear and there must only be a few outcomes like will the hero live or die. Suspence is also created through two factors within the questions. The first one in the probability factor where they is a 'sure thing' which is less exciting and suspenseful than a battle against the odds. The second is what he calls the moral factor, the right thing to do which increases our involvement in the action which sharpens the suspence. The morality does not have to be what out conventional ideas of right and wrong are, just who we think deserves to win. He states the suspense is the greatest and then when both factors are combined, the most desirable outcome is the least likely.