The piece I am going to write about in relation to genre is my AS opening sequence for the thriller film ‘Chaos Theory’. The Chaos Theory is about a girl Taylor who is prone to blackouts and skips certain parts of her life. She keeps a journal to keep track of her life and finds one day that by re-reading these she can go back to these times. She attempts to alter parts of her life but finds changing one thing can make a big difference to our future. The opening sequence I made shows Taylor trying to go back in time and erase her birth.
The genre of our film was obviously a thriller, which allowed us to challenge Todorov’s theory of equilibrium, as our opening sequence began at the end of the story, this is a non-linear narrative. However in a way we followed the typical conventions of a thriller as many start at the end of the narrative, for example the film’ The Butterfly Effect’ which we used for inspiration for our own idea, does this. We decided to stick with this typical convention of the genre, so that it could be recognised by its existing target audience. Steve Neal’s theory of narrative says that all genres are instances of repetition and difference; this means that certain generic features have to be included, in the case of my opening sequence this was the use of an empty, isolated building, dark lighting, fast editing and trying to create the atmosphere of suspense.
We kept with a conventional theme of the thriller narrative which is the idea of the film focusing on the idea of an ‘enigma’ and the unknown. Thrillers often introduce ideas of an ‘enigma’ and then complicate the story right through until the climax. This plot device is used in the thriller genre to help build up the atmosphere of suspense in the film and make the audience want to know more about the characters in the story and be fearful for them. We wanted to play with the idea with identity and make our audience want to know what was going to happen next, so they would be drawn in.
We were also able to challenge Neal’s theory as we went against the convention of a thriller by instead of having a dominating male character as the antagonist and a female character as the protagonist; we made our character a young teenage girl who represents both these character roles. We did this as because of her condition she causes the negative events in her life making her the antagonist; however towards the end of film she also becomes the protagonist by taking control of the situation and going back in time to put an end to it all. We have followed the conventions of a thriller through using the character roles of a protagonist and an antagonist. In thrillers the antagonist drives the protagonist deeper and deeper into a sinister plot, leaving the protagonist feeling helpless and it is not until the climax of the film in which the protagonist finds a solution to defeat the antagonist. We wanted to make sure we represented our character of Taylor at the beginning of the film as being vulnerable, as this is a usual characteristic of young females in the thriller genre, for example many of Alfred Hitchcock’s films such as ‘Pyscho’ feature defenceless women. We chose to have the character of Taylor at similar age to our target audience of young adults, so they could relate to her. We dressed her in casual, laidback clothing which would appeal to this specific audience. We tried to portray Taylor as a stereotypical teen, so that the audience could relate to her.
Genre encompasses many parts and our opening sequence links to it, in more ways than one. The use of an empty location and the fact we used an isolated building, helps to represent Taylor fear and feeling of loneliness/isolation from the real world. It also helped us to create an atmosphere of tension and suspense, like other thrillers, that we were trying to achieve in our opening sequence.
Editing and Mise-en-scene is important to genre, as it contributes to creating certain moods and atmospheres. In our opening sequence, we used dark and dingy to connote the fear Taylor is feeling about going back in time and altering her life. We also used this lighting to make the building appear dangerous and mysterious. When it came to editing, we used quick cuts and fast editing in order to heighten the pace of the sequence and feeling of suspense. This type of editing is a typical convention of thrillers. We used a soundtrack over the top of the opening sequence; it was loud in volume and quick in tempo, to fit with the fast editing. We also used some diegetic sound including the heavy breathing of Taylor as she was running, the footstep sounds of her being chased by the mental care worker and the sound of her reading out from her diary as she wrote. Together these sounds, help with creating a fast build-up of tension, they all work to help provoke emotion from our audience as they fear for what is going to happen to Taylor.
Genre enables us to place a media product in a specific group and helps it to be recognised, in order to attract its target audience. I believe our opening sequence was successful, as it fitted the thriller genre in a number of ways, through the twist we used in the narrative and following the conventions of a typical thriller in terms of camera, editing and Mise-en-scene.