Thriller Recipes- MacGuffin, Cliff Hangers and Red Herrings

What is a Thriller? A thriller is a genre of literature, film, programme etc.;subject to making the audience feel in constant suspense.Thriller's are well best known for making the audience 'jump', literally. Thriller's make the audience feel vivid emotions consisting of terror, paranoia, on edge and draw on elements like suspense, anxiety, terror and tend to give the viewer an adrenaline rush, especially in sense of the film media. 

Many people well know Thrillers for being a genre associated with films; such examples of well written and and well known films being: Psycho (1960, Pulp Fiction (1996), The Sixth Sense (1999), Inception (2010), and Se7en (1995). 

What is a Cliff Hanger and what is a Red Herring? 

A Cliff Hanger is a plot technique used mainly at the end of the movie/book/programme etc to ensure that suspense is cast upon the audience, so that the audience is captivated by the movie (for example) and want to know what is happening and why, normally a cliff hanger appears or 'happens' when normally a main character is caught up in a troublesome or unexplainable (sometimes) situation, and as the viewer for-say, you would have to either come to a conclusion yourself or tune into the next book/episode to get a resolution to the cliff hanger, sometimes. Cliff hangers are mainly used at the end or when the show is about to end.

Red Herrings (not the fish) are described as a Idiom used as a fallacy that has the intent to confuse the reader or viewer perhaps and give a false misinterpreted opinion for the audience to build upon which sways from the actual truth hidden away.

A MacGuffin is a plot device that is used in film, it is a device that the main protagonist or character tries to peruse in order to try and add more depth to the story-line, however in terms of relevance, a MacGuffin is not normally very valuable in adding to the plot over-all, a MacGuffin can take any form such as money, a person or even glory or victory. Hitchcock is a main culprit in populating the term MacGuffin, the film 'The 39 steps' is a  good example of using a MacGuffin.

Coursework Brief

This Blog is selected to hold the needed coursework for AS Media Studies for Ruby Canary,  the work that is to be looked at include the needed pieces of work to look at how a Thriller works and the conventions of a Thriller.

Macro- Genres and Narratives

Narrative and Genre are terms used in the Media to describe different terms and effects that add to the effects and themes given in movies, Genre is a term to describe the category of a movie, such as some categories being: Horror, Musical, Comedy etc.
Narrative describes the story and plot line, narrative entwines with the plot and sequence of events;  'linear narrative' follows the plot and story of a movie in a chronological order in contrast to films like Pulp Fiction that follow a type of narrative opposite of Linear narrative. Non-linear narrative tells the events in a non chronological order, non-linear narrative can be used to recall on a character's memory that is relevant to the time, for the audience to understand more of the plot line is most cases.