Genre Research

From our questionaire, it's apparent most people think our film should be a thriller.

Thriller
The genre 'Thriller' covers a wide range of sub-genres, for example: Action & adventure thriller, Sci-Fi thriller, crime thriller... Pretty much all genres can be tied into a thriller in some way, so for this reason I'm going to focus on the overall aspects of a general thriller film, and then the details of crime thriller, as this seems most suitable.

The purpose of a thriller film is to keep the audience at the edge of their seats with constant suspense and, obviously, thrills. This usually happens by placing characters in dangerous and life threatening situations, and having them not escape until the last conceivable moment. It can also be achieved with plot twists and by leading the viewer astray, so when something unexpected happens they are genuinely surprised, and havnt been waiting for it to happen all along.
Characters in thriller films are usually dark, such as convicts, criminals, stalkers, physchotics, spies and sometimes even terrorists.

Thriller films can be dated as far back as 'Safety Last' in 1923, but its rare that a list of thrillers is put together without at least a mention of Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock helped to shape what we now see as a thriller film with productions such as 'The Lodger' in 1926 and 'The Blackmail' in 1929. A favourite technique of his was to take an innocent victim, and place them in danger due to wrangful accusation or mistaken identity (for example, 'The Wrong Man'). Another much-used technique was the use of 'red herrings', an element within a plot which would lead the viewers to suspect one thing, when infact this was put in entirely to mislead the viewer and has no real significance to the actual plot.
Other examples of thriller films are 'Silene of the lambs', the 1991 production featuring Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, and 'Collateral', featuring Tom Cruise.

Crime Thrillers
As the genre suggest, crime films are concerned with the actions of either a lone criminal or a gang. This is usually done in one of two ways; by either focusing on the criminal themself, or by focusing on their victim and the effects the criminal has had. Characters in Crime films are usually macho males, often with features people would find intimidating such as tattoos and piercings. The characters in these films often have very few or no morals.

Noteable crime films include the 'Dirty Harry' series of films, 'The Godfather' trilogy, and 'Pulp Fiction'. Another film worthy of mentioning is Shifty, as this is a prime example of making a crime thriller film on an extremely low budget.