Conventions of a thriller

Characters:  Our film will include a couple of ambiguous characters who seem like common criminals however end up having a much more developed background than was first expected. As the film develops so will the characters stories, the audience are given little information about the two thieves to start in the hope that they may create their own preconceptions and become more surprised of the truth as the film continues. The main protagonist will always have some kind of compromising weakness for instance in the film Vertigo the main character has a fear of heights which means he can no longer carry out his duties as a San Francisco cop.



Camera angles/shots: I would like to use many close ups and straight angles on the two main characters of the story in the hope to create as much of a personal connection with these two figures as possible. In order to make clear who the main characters are we should make sure that lesser significant characters spend less time on screen and that their stories are much less developed.

Narrative: Our main characters are going to be a couple of escaped criminals being chased down by an important group of people who are after the information these criminals have stolen. Every good thriller will be centered around some kind of crime or criminal act and may involve an element of espionage. For example in the thriller inception the criminal act is taking advantage of somebodies thoughts in order to manipulate them in their own favor; the espionage element is shown in the way of the victims subconscious, his subconscious acts as his psychological security.



Twist: Most thrillers will lead you to believe that a certain character is completely innocent however it then reveals that he is the cause of all the terrible events that have taken place. For example in the film 'Memento' their is a character named teddy who offers to help the main character Lenny to find his wife's killer as he has a condition which means he is unable to create new memories. It is then revealed at the end of the film that Teddy has only been taking advantage of his condition because he is a wanted man. Our misleading element will probably be that it is the government who are the real criminals, the two criminals have a secret of which they have stolen from the government and the government want it back. Whereas the audience will believe that the criminals have done something with selfish intentions.

Mystery/Diversion: Finally our film will have to include some kind of an enigma, this is were by there is a puzzle or conundrum surrounding the narrative. This will help the characters to develop and the overall plot to be more exciting and mysterious. I think that our enigma should be around the two main criminals, for example they could have been involved in the making of this government secret however have not been given the code to access the device within the suitcase. The two escapees' however previously worked on the machine and so have an inkling as to what the password could be. They know that the guy at the head of the time manipulation project had lost his daughter in a previous experiment, and so think that this maybe the key to gaining access to the machine.