Thriller directors and their sub-genres

Brian De Palma is one of the well-known directors who spear-headed the new movement in Hollywood during the 1970s. He is known for his many films that go from violent pictures, to Hitchcock-like thrillers.

Christopher Nolan is the highest grossing and one of the most successful filmmakers in the 21st century. Nolan created his first thriller in 2002 which was insomnia; this is the only film that Nolan directed without receiving at least a share of one of the writing credits, although he wrote the final draft of the script. Nolan has created some of the most famous action thrillers for example: the dark knight trilogy, inception, and interstellar.

One of the most famous British thriller directors was Alfred Hitchcock; he became renowned as England's best director, because he made exceptionally good silent films. Hitchcock was mostly famous for creating: psycho, vertigo and rear. He directed a lot of different types of thriller for example; horror, mystery, romance, action, adventure and crime. Most of his work was mystery thrillers.

Codes and Conventions of opening sequences

The purpose of a film opening is to engage the audience, make them want to continue watching the film. An opening sequence should establish the genre these are some ways that this can be done:

• A wide landscape shot can set the scene straight away. Showing the audience where the scene is located.

• Titles, titles can show the genre of the thriller for example if it is in scary righting usually means it is a horror.

• An action scene is used a lot, this mainly consists of a fast pace chase scene, or a scene that is straight into the battle, it will then end in something bad about to happen but doesn’t actually show you which makes you want to see the rest of the film to see what happens.

• Narrations can establish the character, tell you about them, their background etc.

Existing A level films

This is another existing A level media film called Captive which we also looked at in class, we watched it once then discussed what we liked about it and then we watched it again to really dig deep into the piece and looked at the different types of editing, sound, camera work and the mise en scene:

• Non-centred shots
• Titles and how they move and jump around
• Establishing shot links into the title
• The security camera angles
• Flashbacks
• Sound bridge
• Silence or no dialog
• Music builds up suspense
• High pitched string instrument
• Montage of quick shots
• Reflection in the puddle
• Continuity of titles
• Extreme close ups
• POV Shot
• Fast paced editing  

This was an existing A level film called exemption which we looked at in class, we made notes of what we liked about the film so we could try and include them in our opening sequence. Some of these points are:

• Titles, my group liked the way the titles came on and went off the screen.
• Editing/Overlay, we liked the way the scenes faded into other frames.
• We liked the way the music stopped and the titles appeared.
• Montage of close ups.
• Extreme close ups.
• POV shots.
• The music and the action start at the same time.
• Builds tension using fast shots.
• Jump cut shot.
• Over the shoulder shot.