Thriller codes and conventions
There are many codes and conventions used in thriller films and these codes make the idea of thriller, the codes and conventions which the audience expect to see in every thriller film are fear, tension, danger, heroes, villains, satisfaction, hope and many more.
GK Chesterton
GK Chesterton states that just because thrillers are a modern way of making films that doesn’t mean the idea is trash, we can use modern day problems and influences so that the audience is closer to the film through their own understanding of that time period. Also that the settings for thrillers should be in urban surroundings, modern day cities and props. Using modern surroundings such as city streets brings excitement to these areas, the audience may live in the city and find it shallow and boring, where as thrillers bring this excitement to their streets. The settings in thrillers should be busy, lots of things happening around the story and the plot should be hard to work out for the audience, this is known as aninimity meaning the fear of the unknown. Finally “Poetry of a modern life” changing the times to add tension.
Northrop Frye
Northrop Frye builds up on Chesterton’s critique and adds his own views to the thriller codes and conventions. The hero is often an ordinary person, this is because the audience can relate to the hero, and they will become emotionally attached to the hero because they will see that they are not much different than themselves. The audience will get carried away because YOU are ordinary. The audience are always happy to believe the situations in thrillers because the ideas are similar to romance fiction. He also states that no normal rules have to apply, situations can change, so can morels and understandings. Thrillers should turn the urban cities into an enchanted forest, the unbelievable can happen at any time plus nothing should be what it seems. Good and bad applies in thrillers, if there is a hero there must be a villain.
Jon Cawelti
Jon Cawelti combines both Chesterton and Frye’s codes and conventions, he agrees with their views and also adds to them. Thrillers should be exotic, this means that nothing should belong in our ordinary lives, things should happen which turn everything upside down and inside out by doing this it reveals to the audience a completely different way of looking at their cities and the people in it. All this together makes the city a mystery.
WH Matthews
WH Matthews relates thrillers with the ideas of the mazes and labyrinths of the old ancient fiction stories, by this he means good vs. evil and the bad guys in those ancient stories can be copied into modern fiction. The plot should be like a maze, twist, turns and deception in the plots so that the audience can never figure the plot out to easily. However thrillers need cleugh, a trial, and clue, something for the audience to follow and become involved with the plot themselves. All in all WH Matthews says thrillers should be a puzzling journey to make the audience feel like a detective.
Pascal Bonitzer
Pascal thought that WH Matthews was describing ‘partial vision’. Partial vision is where the audience never see the full picture, never get told the full plot in detail, this keeps certain subjects away from the audience so that it’s harder for them to understand the plot and figure it out. The audience should only be allowed to see so much because if they saw and knew everything from the start there would be no tension and the audience would get bored. Also the narrator picks away at the plot/maze and reveals it to the audience as the story goes along.
Lars Ole Saurberg
Lars agrees with partial vision. Thrillers should deliberately hide key elements away from the audience for the same reasons above. He also states that thrillers should use delay or ‘pro-tracking’ in certain key stages of the films, by doing this its add massive tension for the audience because they may know that something is going to happen but are revealed to it very slowly and often with non-diegetic music to add atmosphere.
Noel Carroll
Noel Carroll says it’s very important to always create questions in thrillers; this will keep the audience thinking about those questions throughout the film and then add tension when the questions are answered. Another code and convention often used in thrillers is whether the hero should live or die and the factor that it may create a lot of suspense and feeling from the audience to witness the hero dying, it may not be morally be right for the hero to die. Another key code is the idea of battling against the odds, as if the hero has a very slim chance of winning over the situation but in the end comes out ontop.
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