Research and Planning

Before constructing the opening to a feature length thriller it was necessary that we learned about the typical conventions within a thriller using such things as the characters, lighting, plot line, mise-en-scene, camera angles, sound and editing. To do this we watched several thrillers and thriller openings in class including Psycho among others as well as watching thrillers in our own time, such as The Others, Spellbound, Seven and Panic Room.

We also used several different books within our research one of which Myth and the Movies by Stuart Voytilla was extremely helpful in helping us gain a greater understanding of thriller conventions.

Below are some links to sights concerning some of the films mentioned above if you would like to know more about them.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038109/ Spellbound

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258000/ Panic Room

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230600/ The Others

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114369/ Seven

Here are just a few of the thriller conventions that we were able to pick up from watching these films.

• One of these is that the majority of the characters are ordinary people who have been forced into extraordinary and dangerous circumstances.
• There are often red herrings throughout the film as well as clues towards the twists in the plot.
• Thriller's often focus on the psychological state of the characters. 

What these conventions eventually gave us was a revived plot line which revolved around the murder's life years after the murder and a prison sentence although this is is not mentioned in the final product. The idea that the killer would in fact be the hero and protagonist was developed into the eventual plot line that the victim's freind or sister would hunt the daughter to kill her in revenge, from which got the title Eye for a Eye.