Conventions of a thriller

There are many conventions of an opening sequence that is a thriller. There are going to be some examples of  conventions that make an effective opening sequence of a thriller.

There should be the use of eyeline matches in thrillers to show that they are looking at something traumatic and they are left stunned, shocked or regretting. This is used in Brick where the teenager looks at this dead woman in an isolated location and it cuts back to his facial expressions and it shows that he is shocked of what has happened. It makes the audience ask questions about the relationship between the two and they do not know whether he murdered this person.

Moreover, in The Silence of the Lambs it uses eyeline matches to show the horrific cases on the board and it tracks towards the character's face showing that she is left stunned and shocked of what she is seeing and reading. It introduces information about the antagonist revealing that he is a very violent man shown in the pictures on the board. When it cuts to the character's face it could imply that she could be quite scared about these cases. The audience would be disgusted of what the antagonist is done and would ask why he did what he did.

 Another convention of an opneing thriller is to have low key lighting. This is effective in The Inside Man as it implies that the character has an evil personality; shows that he is twisted and is set out to cause trouble. Low key lighting is usually used to reveal the antagonist in the film.

Low angle shots are conventions of thrillers as it gives the idea that the character is either the protagonist or the antagonist. It gives us an idea about the character for instance in Momento we get the idea that this character is quite dominant and powerful in the opening sequence.

Also another convention of a thriller in an opening sequence is the use of close ups effictively. For example in Se7en there are a range of close ups of the character's hands and the actions that he is doing. It is used throughout the opening sequence so it constanly doesn't reveal the character's identity, making the audience wanting to know who this person is and what he is set out to do. Furthermore, the sound in opening sequences for thrillers doesn't seem to be friendly and sounds unconventional, this is used in Se7en as well, revealing that there could be some twisted characters in the film.

The use of dis-equiibrium in the The Silence of the Lambs shows that there is some sort of psycopath on the loose and he is going around skinning victims creating fear in the audience making them feel that someone should stop this from happening. It also makes the audience ask questions such as why he is doing this.

Also dis-equilibrium is used in The Sixth Sense showing a character that is mentally challenged or mentally depressed who has lost the plot and shoots the protagonist and then shoots himself. This leaves the audience in shock as it was so unexpected and leaves the audience in suspense. The audience would most likely want to know what was wrong with the suicidal character and why did he go to the conclusion of shooting the protagonist, then shooting himself?