Maxwell
‘A good example of a program that uses thriller techniques is the Japanese animation known as Death Note. This was a crime thriller with many psychological elements. Such as a unclear protagonist, antagonist battle. This is very similar to rare thriller techniques. However, the storyline is not too uncommon to the thriller genre. A serial killer, hunted by a hired vigilante. This program gives a real insight into thriller as it is often very suspenseful and the short cliff-hanging episodes keep the viewers very captivated and intrigued as to what will happen next. Variety and a constant psychological battle is used pivotally to maintaining audience's attention. Thriller techniques used vary as it is animation, but majorly stay the same. An example of this is the change of scenes that often happen which resemble jump cuts used in thriller films. This is common within thrillers to build tension so it is not surprising to see used in films.
One program that gives insight to thriller is breaking bad. This is a drama-thriller. A chemistry teacher has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, who joins with his mate to sell crystal meth. He only has a couple of years to live. Rather than telling his wife he decides to join with his friend and start cooking meth and selling it to squirrel away for something for her. They also have a son that suffers from cerebral palsy. There are a lot of twists and turns and the characters are brought to dead ends. There are a lot of explosives, kidnapping, violence and flashbacks throughout the T.V series.
It uses a lot of low lighting which portrays a thriller film series, this is done so the characters all are quite shady, by this I mean they are portrayed as evil. Breaking Bad has, in short, everything a thriller needs: suspense, laughs, danger and poignance. It follows the conventions of a thriller: quick cuts, shadows, tense music, changes in the angels of shots, black and white shots, mirroring and flashbacks, ETC.
The program because it has a lot of seasons, it uses a lot of cliffhangers, to make the audience more excited to make them await what will happen in the next episode.
Andrew
This series looks at the narcotics scene in Baltimore through the eyes of law enforcers as well as the drug dealers and users. Other facets of the city that are explored in the series are the government and bureaucracy, schools and the news media. Central to the structure and plot of the show is the use of electronic surveillance and wiretap technologies by the police. The writers strove to create a realistic vision of an American city based on their own experiences. The show's aim for realism was the creation of truthful characters. This doesn’t just mean that the show uses real characters, but also the storyline is based on a true story. In distinguishing the police characters from other television detectives, Simon makes the point that even the best police of The Wire are motivated not by a desire to protect and serve, but by the intellectual vanity of believing they are smarter than the criminals they are chasing.
The show is realistic in depicting the processes of both police work and criminal activity. There have even been reports of real-life criminals watching the show to learn how to counter police investigation techniques. The fifth season portrayed a working newsroom at the Baltimore Sun and has been hailed as the most realistic portrayal of the media in film and television. The sound used in the program also gives a big insight to thriller because it uses what you would find in a typical thriller film. The supervisor of the investigation, Lt. Cedric Daniels, has to deal with his own problems, such as a corrupt bureaucracy, some of his detectives beating suspects, hard-headed but determined Det. McNulty, and a blackmailing deputy. The show depicts the lives of every part of the drug "food chain", from junkies to dealers, and from cops to politicians.
Juriz and Andrew
Evaluation:
This is part of our Pre-production research and by doing this research, it allowed us to have a wider knowledge of what to do to keep the audience focused. We’d have to think outside the box and use as many thriller techniques as possible to make our opening believable/natural. Coming off this point this was also helpful because we got a lot of ideas from these programs when developing our final product. This was key for us because only one person in our group did media in G.C.S.E so it was useful because the other three of us needed to have an idea of what a thriller contains and the elements that surround it.
Juriz Castillo and Andrew Fernando