Genre research- Crime

Crime

As we have decided we are going to do crime genre I will firstly look at crime in general and then look into different sub-genre that will make up my short film.

The crime genre deals with crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. The most of crime movies share similar structure, however not all.

They usually have a criminal who breaks law to get reward or sometimes help others.The reasons are different each time but mostly money matter.

The detectives or 'good guys' are looking for them and usually are involved in a movie. However, sometimes they are left out of movie for most of the time until very end. The criminals often don't get away with their crimes unless their crime is in a good reason. For example if they are robbing bank to help his father they are more likely to get away.

Crime-thriller

Conventions of Crime Thriller Genre

Conventions of a general thriller film

- Suspicion                  - Enigmas                                       - Extraordinary events
- Drama                       - Investigation                                - Antagonist in danger
- Fast Pace                  - Antagonist & Protagonist            - Storyline that requires thinking
- Crime                         - Cliffhanger                                  - Complex Narrative

What would the audience expect:

Within a thriller film, the audience expect the film to meet many conventions. The reason for this is because the conventions of the thriller genre is what makes up the genre itself. If the film dosen't meet the conventions of the genre, then it wouldnt count as a thriller genre, therefore it wouldn't meet the expectations of the audience. An example of a thing that the audience may expect is most likely to be a lot of drama and investigation. The reason for this is because within a thriller genre, there is usually a good person as well as a bad person. The bad person usually does something wrong and it causes investigation by the good person. Another example of something that the audience may expect is a complex narrative. For example, 'North by Northwest,' had a storyline which was complex because it had the audience wondering what was going on due to the fact that one of the characters were identified incorrectly. This is something that is expected within a thriller genre because it creates enigmas for the audience and makes them ask questions.

What the audience would not expect:

I personally believe that in a thriller genre, the audience wouldn't expect anything happy to happen until the end. The reason as to why i would say that nothing good will happen until the end is because at the end, the antagonist would have usually been found or exposed and they usually die in most thriller films. Another thing that i wouldn't expect in the thriller genre is if the antagonist is never revealed. I believe that there is only a certain amount of time in which the antagonist can hide for, i believe that before the end, its important for the protagonist to be revealed.

Using both crime genre and crime-thriller sub-genre I got clear idea on what is expected from this kind of movie. I will try to get some of this information used in our movie as that way, the movie will follow a same structure. This will make audience clear on what they are watching.