Research into Conventions of a Thriller Genre - Miss Miller

Conventional to a thriller film.

A thriller movie should have an exciting plot, typically involving crime or espionage. It makes the audience feel on edge with a great deal of suspense and tension added throughout the film.
A typical thriller film is Saw V, in the clip 'Survival of the Fittest'. The conventions of a thriller is what you'd typically expect in the film. For example, low-key lighting, suspense, tension, eary music and much more. In this clip, it portrays the typical conventions of a thriller.

Insert the clip

The low key lighting is conventional in a thriller film as the dark shadows help to create the mysterious scenes and the  tension as we as the audience feel shadowed and unaware of what is going to happen. It is used in the clip to help create the darkness of the situation. It's conventional as in your typical thriller film they always have low key lighting so it emphasises their dangerous situation, which creates a higher suspense level and makes the audience in a more vulnerable position which is what a thriller is meant to make them feel.

Another convention to a thriller film, is innocent victims are made vulnerable, and either made to be murdered or go through a series of unfortunate events. You'd expect many murders or jumpy scenes in thrillers to make the scenes more terrifying and heart stopping. In Saw we see many of the victims in the survival of the fitness trying to fight for their life's. At the end of the scene one man is horrifically blown up, therefore murdered. The victims are made to look like normal everyday people, which makes the scene more relatable to real life, as the audience feel like they are part of the scene.

Tension and suspense are a convention of a thriller film as they are what creates the mood for the scene. They make the audience more eager to watch and find out what happens. With great suspense and tension the audience start to imagine what is going to happen next as they don't know initially what is going to happen within the next few minutes. In the clip we see huge amounts of suspense and tension when they have to smash the glasses in order to find a key to open a safety pass way. As they are all fighting for these keys we know one person will be killed in the process, so the audience start to panic and are intrigued to see who will survive and who will perish. This is all conventional to a thriller as the suspense and tension makes the audience feel more personally involved as they start to get attached to certain character and don't know whose fate will end there.

The narrative is usually always the same in thrillers. There are always victims, iconography such as knifes blood etc, scary music all to add to the theme of the film. They usually base it on the vulnerability of victims and have a main killer or plot which is used to kill people. Saw shows that there are many vulnerable characters in this scene as they fight for their life's. We see them at there most vulnerable but at their most deadliest. It's conventional to a thriller as in most thrillers the characters will occasionally go crazy with fear, so will kill anything in their path to help them with their freedom.