Suspense and the 'Bomb Theory'

Suspense is used reguarly and is evident in almost every horror and thriller film produced. Suspense is when the main attention of viewers is distracted and taken away from the main story line creating curiosity.. This is most effectivley done with the close use of sound allowing a director to match music to the characters mood within a scene or how they want to make the viewer feel.

When producing my thriller teaser trailer I am going to focus on using effective sound which relates to the placement and characters within a scene. Sound that I will use and incorporate into my teaser trailer will be slow with a downbeat tempo, creating an eery yet scary mood.

Suspense can be broken down into 5 smaller components which together excites and thrills the audience. The main aim of suspense, specifically the 'bomb theory' is to ensure that what the viewer thinks is going to happen, never does. The bomb theory was created by Alfred Hitchcock and he stated that suspense has key ingredients which need to be adapted and used within a film in order to keep the audience sitting in fear, waiting for something to happen.

The 5 components of the bomb theory are:

• Empathy with characters
• Knowing more than the characters
• False plateau (leading audicence in the wrong way)
• Placing ideas in mind
• Sound

These 5 components are used within conjunction of one another in order to make the audience scared, wanting to see what happens next. The main aim of the 'bomb theory' is to keep the audience on a tight string, using false plateau to place different ideas in the mind of viewers leading them of the beaten track and confusing them.

Horror vs Thriller

As an introduction to the course I focused on researching and gathering information on the background on the concept of both horror and thriller genres. I focused on looking at where horror began and how it was first applied to film in order to gain consumer interest. From doing this I was able to identify clear links and the main differences between horror and thriller. Definitions of these can be found below:

Horror - Facing and using peoples fears to gain audience interest by aiming to excite viewers and get their adrenelin running. Tends to use scenes which are gorey and bloody and works effectivley by making the 'evil' character obvious to viewers.

Thriller - Focuses on targeting the viewers pyshcological and emotional fears creating a sinking feeling within the gut of the viewer, keeping them on a constant string which is pulled every so often to create suspense

Horror can be categorised in two different categories; horror and ultimate horror.Ultimate horror focuses on taking the unimaginable and placing it within a realistic setting. This type of horror specifically affects viewers psychologically as their most unthought fears are taken and adapted closley with familiarity and suspense. However horror is more general, focusing on the obvious, for instance monsters and blood.

Although both of these genres of film can be clearly defined and seperated there is a hybrid between the two as some components can be very similar and can be used in conjuction with one another. Elements of both genres are taken by directors and innovated to create films that are in demand from consumers.

Introduction to the Course...

Hello, my name is Kerry Lucraft. I am currently studying three courses for the second year of my A-Levels at La Swap, these subjects consist of Media, Business Studies and Politics.

This blog is going to focus on the development and construction of my A2 media coursework. For the coursework aspect of this course I am going to produce a teaser trailer, poster, a home webpage and I will create and update regular posts on here to show and present my developments. I will be working in a group with two people from my media class; Beckie Roberts and Josh Smith. We will be focusing on producing a teaser trailer package based on the thriller horror genre.