Adaptation of media conventions

The conventions of a thriller include excitement, tension and suspense as its main elements. Thrillers are meant to hook and influence the audience moods, thus giving them high levels of anticipation, expectation, anxiety and/or terror. Thriller genre's encourage the mind to think and create alternative happenings and often give the audience that adrenaline rush they so desire. the peak of their interest is often heightened due to the anticipation of what is going to happen next, this excitement is used throughout films to create fear and make the moment tense. The conventions of a thriller go through ups and downs which create a peculiar pattern of excitement and anti- climax. For example if the audience is watching a film and the music is scary and sinister they are likely to suspect something is going to happen, subsequently if nothing happens they are disappointed  This makes it easier to scare or thrill the audience as they are shocked when something mysteriously happens.

"A thriller is usually a villain-driven plot, whereby he or she presents obstacles that the protagonist must overcome."-Wikipedia.

Throughout our film we used the conventions of a regular thriller and it therefore helped us to map out how we wanted our film to be like. at the start of the film we are introduced to our first character and straight away you see the hand in the background. This was not our original plan. In our plan we had decided to show a shadow and that way the killer would look mysterious and seemingly undetectable  Due to technical reasons we couldn't achieve this however we created the same effect by placing the killers hand on the door while Scarlett is getting ready for the party and listening to music.

 A stereo or distraction is used throughout thriller movies to distract the victim from what is about to happen. The hand on the door and loud sound effect effects the audience but not the character. This creates frustration and terror as the audience watches on and wonders if the victim will be able to see what's going on. The rock music also adds to the tension throughout the scene, this is due to its hard/ garish nature which is also found a lot in thriller movies, this creates tension. the hand on the door not only creates tension but is an anti climax which we use to confuse and entice the audience. if she got killed straight away the movie would be bland but the hand is subconsciously left in the audiences mind, therefore when she is killed it is more brutal. this makes the audience feel sympathy for the character and almost a sense of guilt washes over them as they feel they are involved and have just seen what has happened in the film. 

Like in a lot of films not just thriller's the character's are introduced to us, therefore when the other two girls are getting ready for their night out the audience see them and see who the victim might be friends with. To stick to the thriller conventions the title is also horror- esque. The font is bold and bloody against a black background which is like a euphemism of Scarlet's bloody corpse lying on her bed. The dripping of the blood and not an abrupt end was very significant as it showed that the 'bloodshed' was not yet finished. This could then foreshadow that the other  girls are not safe. This is also reiterated in the actual title 'Who's Next?' could be a universal meaning but it also involves the audience by creating suspense and asking them the question. it then creates excitement by giving them a chance to work out for themselves exactly who is next to be murdered.