Thriller Poster Analysis and Genre Research

 Poster one: The Killing Kind

This poster draws attention to the woman on the right side of the poster with the popping colour of the red umbrella and following the eyeline of the man on the left. Though there is a crowd in the photo, two characters stand out purposely as the man does not have an umbrella at all the women has her pop of colour whereas the crowd covers their faces with their black umbrella and brown coats revealing that these are the probably the titular characters of the narrative. The women wears clothes that blend in with what the crowd is wearing with her brown trench coat matching others portraying the man as strange and different. There is a lot of visible rain in the foreground setting the mood as perhaps eerie and unsettling. The fonts of the text mostly stay the same apart from the colours and size though the logo is right at the bottom using cursive and white standing out from the background. The main title has a blur effect use to it like it is the rain refracting a light reinforcing its importance in the story. The target audience of this poster could be middle-aged women who enjoyed the book and like thrillers.

Poster 2: BBC Sherlock

This poster contains two characters with a background that looks like a piece of film or a cyanotype with the faded blue colour. Both the characters wear shades of grey not really standing out from each other apart from hair and coat length which shows the character on the left with a trench coat. Both characters look out to the camera while one fixes his gloves. In the background there is prominent London landmarks like the London Eye and Big Ben creating a setting and standards before the viewer watches. The title at the bottom is ‘Sherlock’ which creates a presold audience and expectation as the novels already have fans who will want something out of the series. The text has a grey fade to it giving an idea the series will have a gritty feel to it. There is a quote which references the original novels which draws people in as they hope to hear it. Behind the characters is a door with the number on the door ‘221b’ which is where the original characters lived. The target audience for this show is people who enjoy classic literature or any fans of detective thrillers of any age.

Poster 3: Platform 7

This photo has one woman centred under the number 7 which seems to be the main point of the narrative considering the title. In a blur going past we can see a train if most of the drama will take place in a train station. The women is wearing casual clothing making her seem relatable and gives her a sense of mystery as we do not know much about her character as there is no tag line featured. The text is centred and white. The poster background is dark and at night with a couple of light sources behind her being repeated. Though not much is revealed in the poster when doing more research it seems to be a paranormal thriller.

History of Thrillers

Thrillers started in film in the late 1800’s and most prominently in the 1930’s with Alfred Hitchcock. The most popular and classic TV thrillers started around the 2000’s with shows like ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘The Wire’ becoming so prominent in the industry with their success even in modern day. TV shows depend heavily on popularity unlike films who can have one offs and be recognised as a good film by audiences. TV shows depend on narrative and issues facing the characters we should root for especially thrillers where they are trying to overcome something, without this anchor point in the TV show the show may no longer be funded by the producers and taken away after one season.

Fandom with these shows can be massive especially if it is ongoing, for example Sherlock and Breaking Bad have two vastly different but devoted fandoms who create versions of show with fanart, fanfiction and memes.

The change in TV thrillers over the years started with the episodes, a season of a drama show would usually be 22 to 24 episodes long but with the introduction of streaming services and being able to access them constantly the seasons became 8 to 10 episodes long. Thrillers tended to have stories of the week that would be resolves within the episode so people could dip in and out the story without getting confused about the plot however with streaming there is usually an overarching story that people can follow and binge watch in one go.

With these 8-to-10-episode seasons characters storylines are more fleshed out and focused and when seasons were longer a lot of people in the audience felt as if characters were just doing things to fill in time. Modern audiences require a fast-paced show that doesn’t last forever and this is because a lot of people they are targeting their shows to have seen something similar which is what interested them in the first place, and this helps bring in information quicker and if audiences are just watching the same longer season thing every time to go watch a thriller, they will become bored. To do this companies will try and stay up to date with peoples preferred genres and what’s popular and what critics say about other thrillers to try and avoid getting the same criticism if there is any.

Audience figures and popularity in Thrillers

A lot of live Thriller TV shows had a devoted fan base racking up millions of viewers on the first broadcast of the episode. Broadchurch when it was running would average up to 7.1 million viewers per week. Shows like breaking bad gained popularity overtime with the first episode only getting just over 1 million viewers and the last getting over 7 million because of others getting invested and telling other people to watch it. However, BBC’s Sherlock had the opposite effect. In its first episode 7.5 million people tuned in to watch the show as it had a presold audience because of the novels. In the fourth season the ratings were 12.72 million to begin with, but it dropped after criticisms on how it was written as there was a high fandom expectation.

Codes and Conventions of the Thriller

Thrillers are characterised by the moods that the audience feel whether that is excitement, suspense, surprise, anticipation, or anxiety. Thrillers want to keep the audience guessing to retain attention as the plot builds toward an audience. There are usually a lot of literary narrative devices like red herrings, plot twists, dramatic irony and cliff hangers are used extensively. Another device used is the flashback where exposition is used for characters to explain their reasoning for doing all their actions which are usually something bad like murder or any sort of crime maybe to help us sympathise with them because they were in a dire situation and their crime was the only way out of it. They can also be used when detectives figure out who caused the crime, and they go back in a flashback to see how they did it. Thrillers are sometimes villain lead with the audience rooting for them rather than the law or people who are usually in the role of the protagonist.

A typical scene in a thriller might contain: the two titular opposing characters in a dark and dingy alley with the killer and the private detective having a stand-off conversation with guns or some sort of weapon to make it threatening and give that excitement to the audience as they question what will happen next. The sound may build tension along with the action with strings and piano.