Thriller-Comedy Genre Conventions

 Over the past week of deliberating with my portfolio project partner Alejandro, we've pretty much settled in on the thriller-comedy genre. In this blog post, I'll be researching the conventions of this genre to help ensure I know what rules to follow and which ones I might decide to break as I further develop my narrative.

Thriller

First and foremost, a common mistake film viewers make is grouping thrillers and horrors into the same group, which is incorrect. The goal of a thriller is to induce anxiety and keep the audience on the edge of their seat, while the goal of a horror is to terrify, frighten, and even revolt the audience in some cases. Some defining characteristics of thrillers are:

• High Stakes - Something of great value to the main character is in jeopardy
• "Unity of Opposites" - A character is locked into a problem and unable to escape the situation
• Odds that seem impossible for a character to overcome, even to the character themselves, making the audience feel greatly uncertain to what the outcome will be
• Ticking clock - A clear shortage of time on the protagonist's hands in order to ramp up the amount of tension in the film. Picture a story where a man must drop off money by midnight to save his daughter and now must scramble to get the money for his daughter.
• Moral struggle, blurring the lines between what is objectively and subjectively good and bad based on the character's needs and priorities.
• Intelligent protagonists and antagonists aware of each other's strengths and weaknesses
  

The rivalry between Batman and the Joker best embodies these thriller archetypes, as they are so familar with each other they are virtually always in a game of chess, predicting the other's next move before they are even able to act.

Comedy

Originally, the definition of a comedy was anything with a happy ending, but it has evolved over time to be known as anything containing elements of humor, and is therefore super easy to fuse with virtually any genre. Some defining characteristics are:

• Relatable reflections of the truths of everyday life, but in greatly exaggerated manners. Think McLovin from Superbad, a reflection of typical depictions of relatively unpopular high school kids, but with virtually everything cranked up to 10
  
  
  
• Shot composition and camera movements that are motivated to create comedic effect
• Specific character deliveries that suit the comedic needs of a media text at a given point in time. The needs are entirely contextual and can range from dead pan to overly emotional and dramatic.

  
  
• Slapstick - physical humor created from over the top performances or uncoordinated movement, or violence

In my short film, where I seek to create a blend of these two genres, some conventions of each I most definitely plan on recreating are deadpan delivery, blurring of morality, and impossible odds. I feel like my sense of humor in real life is pretty deadpan so I would like to see how I can recreate this in a thriller comedy, and I feel like these thriller elements are the most iconic and reinforcing of the thriller genre.