How to film a thriller

How to film a thriller:

Thrillers have many aspects of cinematography,sound and other devices which make it a thriller and make it easily identifiable to be a thriller, these aspects are known as "thriller conventions" and the majority of them are all outlined within the film clip below. When we talk about filming a thriller and the key aspects which make up one we normally talk about a couple a couple of main features, we normally discuss the shot types, sound, mise en scene and editing as thrillers have a particular way of going about these features and i am going to be observing and talking about all of them within the thriller scene below.

Editing

During not even the first minute of this short movie there is some editing immediately thrown into it, we begin with a fade which is a classic thriller editing techniques used to show the passage of time and is mostly used during a longer driving/walking scene and is used to speed things up, throughout the film there are also many consecutive straight cuts which are mainly used to speed up the video as well and are the simplest but also arguably the most effective way of using transitions mainly due to the fact that  the cuts are "invisible", this means that we do no really point them out or dwell on them too much and that we just continue watching the movie as if it is just one continuous recording which is great for any film maker as this allows them to do multiple shots without bothering the audience too much, this type of transition is especially useful when it comes to thriller movies as there are so many shots that these types of movies use the best way to get between all of them is through straight cuts. 

Cinematography

 The cinematography for this clip is very good as it accurately portrays any and basically every thriller movie as the majority of them will have at least one of the shots which are present within this miniature film, the most obvious shot which is in the clip is the close up as many of them are used to prtray the main characters feelings at the time and to show that he feels he is in trouble without actually saying anything or doing anything outright the close up on the facial expression is more than enough to convey to the audience the feelings of the character and the fact that he feels as if he is in danger. The other shot which also conveys to us this sense of danger is the medium shot of the passageway which gives us this sense of somebody watching the man and what he is doing and making it very ominous, the final shot worth noting in my opinion is the steady-cam shot at the end of the film which is used in many other thriller films when following the main character as it makes you feel as if you are actually following them yourself and part of the action and great escape yourself.

Sound
Sound is also a major role within any thriller film and this short one portrays the correct use of it very effectively, at the beginning before any danger or worry is present there is just the happy sound of birds chirping and the outdoors however once the man enters the seemingly abandoned ruins all of this happy and upbeat audio immediately stops and is instead replaced by ominous diegetic sounds such as water dripping and footsteps and really gives off this sense of danger and worry which really works together well with the creepy surroundings. Once the man leaves the ruins again and his heavy breathing has slowed down it goes back to the happy sounds and the sounds of the birds again to show that everything has gone back to normal.