Genre Essay - Sophie Bishop

To what extent does your thriller conform to traditional structures of genre?

The opening sequence was a Thriller, with sub genres of mystery and phycological thriller. The plot was about our main character(villain), 'The Red Caller', a woman, blackmailing our heroin, a business man. Our thriller does conform to the traditional structure of genre, and of theorists who created these theory's.

Our thriller was not a hybrid, but had multiple sub genres, phycological and mystery  which follows Chandler's theory that all genres have sub genres. it also agrees with Chandler's description of genre, that all medias belong to one genre. If our thriller were to be a hybrid it would not target our target audience, but another age range/gender.

Our thriller doesn't have a clear structure, or it would not create structure and would not agree with Mittell's theory. Following Neal's theory it is a process as apposed to a structure. It also follows his theory that to have a genre, it must conform to those genre characteristics  as it does. Our mise-en-scene followed the rules of a thriller inorder to appeal to a popular target audience of a thriller, males aged 18-29. Our mise-en-scene, included costumes (bold and promiscuous for our villain character, and a business suit for our businessman character which is relatable to this age group. The lighting was dull, and colour was dull and cool toned (colour grading editing) and our location was in London also relatable. our plot included blackmail, a common conflict created within a thriller, our characters were simply a villain and heroin, also common and stereotypical in behaviour and camera angles and shots. But the gender was not, the gender stereotypes swapped, but this was in a way to show voyeurism, attracting the male audience. The soundtrack created the correct atmosphere and mood, mystery and suspense, as well as the Foley. The editing style was fast paced to complement the soundtrack, adding tot e suspense built. Using editing I used an effect, excluding the red in the film, and making the rest black and white, but with a cool/blue undertone. This added to our mood, conforming to traditional conventions of a thriller, because cold and serious. Red can be seen as danger, the red was the colour fo the costume of 'The Red Caller', showing she is dangerous, this was the only technique as well as camera angles and shots, conforming to Altman's theory. The London buses and telephone boxes were also red, making London bold, and clear that it is a relatable city, and the telephone box was our main prob, causing conflict.

Mitchell believed that the audience of a  genre created their own choices, this we followed, as our enigma code, build mystery and our other characteristics did too so. Allowing our audience to make their own mind up, on what will happen, showing our enigma code was successful. Mittell also believed that genres all belong to a culture category  our genre of thriller it is common to see city's as it is relatable and well known, we chose London which follows his theory.

Our thriller also follows Altmans theory, that genre has pleasure outcomes, our did. Our emotional pleasure was the sympathy created for the businessman  shown by high angles, the soundtrack, behaviour and dialogue. We showcased a lot of different emotions, caused by the mystery and fast pace, so we also included visceral pleasure. Also we included intellectual puzzel, because of our enigma code and mystery, allowing the audience to figure out what is going on.

Abercrombie, a modern theorist thinks that boundaries within genre are changing, our thriller disagrees this. Because of our thriller closely following traditional conventions, which is shown by all if the theories above that our thriller follows.

Buckingham believed that a genre was a constant negation and change, which is true to some extent in the production of our thriller, but not the end product. Throughout ur research and planning we explored new medias to inspire us, therefore changing our ideas as we went, to create a thriller which conforms to the other theories, we conformed to. 

In conclusion my thriller closely conforms to traditional and post modernism theories, with only one not conforming, which would contrast too heavily if it did conform, and would not attract to our target audience. Our thriller conforms so heavily because it was our first production we had made, so we were new at using mise-en-scene, camera shots and angles, editing and sound to create a successful thriller. So in order for it to attract the correct target audience and be successful, it had to follow the rules of a thriller.