Codes and Conventions of Thrillers

The main codes and conventions of a thriller are quite easy to spot.

- There is always a chase of some kind, whether it's obvious or metaphorical.
- The pace of the film is always very very fast, making the chase seem even faster.
- Thrillers are usually set in a city or town, so you expect to see large buildings and lots of people.
- Therefore are therefore men in suits, who are usually portrayed as the "baddies."
- There is surveillance of some kind, usually through cameras, which adds to the audience's fear of being watched, thus adding to the suspense of the genre.
- Thrillers are usually seen as 'masculine' as the men are usually seen as the people in charge and causing the action in the film.


There are also micro-elements within the sub-genres of thrillers. For example, you get guns in crime thrillers, elevators in political thrillers and the colour red in any erotic thriller.


Alfred Hitchcock set the codes and conventions we see in most modern thrillers. His well-known films include The Lodger, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Pscho and The Birds, all of these showing chases, men in suits and surveillance.


We will be analysing many of these films, see how successful they were, as see if we can use some of these original codes and conventions of these thrillers to make our teaser trailer more successful.