Evaluation: Question 1

My thriller follows conventions of a thriller. Firstly, the costume used is typical. For example the antagonist is dressed in all black clothing to hide his identity from the audience and creates suspicion amongst them. However, the victims are dressed in pure colours to show that they’re pure and innocent with a relaxed body language. Secondly we have included stereotypes of the antagonist being a strong male and the victim as a female which is innocent and weak. This is used to make the audience feel sorry for her. Lastly the location we picked is deserted/isolated land in the forest which creates suspension and makes the audience feel worried for the characters as the isolation of the location is big and therefore they can’t escape or run for help. This makes them feel helpless. Lastly, all thrillers involve death or torture which was evident in our thriller.

Generic conventions of a thriller:
One generic convention of a thriller is the use of lighting. A commonly used lighting technique is low key lighting. This type of lighting creates mystery as it doesn’t reveal the location/ environment the characters are placed in which keeps the audience on the edge of their seat as anything can pop out to scare them.

This is an example of low-key lighting from the thriller ‘Scream’ where the environment is revealed to the audience to create suspicion. Another example of a generic convention of a thriller is shown here. The antagonist is wearing gall black and a mask to cover up his identity to make the audience worried. They also don’t know what he’s capable of doing and therefore they get paranoid. Also, the dark coloured clothing shows that he is a dark character that does bad things as black is referred to death and is worn at funerals.

The conventions of the target audience are the age groups. They characters starring in my thriller is all 17+ and therefore our target audience is within them age groups. People within these age groups are more likely to have a bigger imagination compared to other age groups and therefore they can be scared quicker. We also picked this age group as they can relate to the lifestyle of the characters. We involved themes such as love where they can relate to the expressions.