Music In Thrillers

Thriller is a genre of literature, film, video gaming and television that uses suspense, tension, and excitement as the main elements. The best examples of thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Sub-genres include crime thrillers, mystery thrillers, paranoid thrillers, psychological thrillers, and horror thrillers.

I am now analysing 4 different titles sequences' music throughout them and comparing them to one another. With this I am seeing if there is a trend in the type of audio used in Thrillers or if there is a variety. My aim is to find out as much about the sound in thrillers by analysing these following four movie title sequences: Inception, Shutter Island, Seven & Limitless; and from this hoping to gain knowledge in what is typical music of a thriller which my group and I can therefore go on to use when creating our own for our title sequence.

Inception:
loud dramatic symphonies
building up
repetition
loud dramatic build up fades out to loud waves
ambient sound of waves
sound of children in distance
ambient calm tide coming in
eery sound developing
calm eery beat with calm tide
loud shriek/scream of a child in the middle of peace
sudden noise



Shutter Island:
long orchestra sounds
sharp sounds
deep loud sudden sounds
loud to quiet
repetition
build up
deep horrific trumpets and symbols
small sharp blips
replica siren sound



Seven:
lightning and thunder like sounds
static sounds
repetition
computer generated sounds
robotic
sci-fi sounds-space
sudden sharp sounds
radio tuning
strange sci-fi/space fake eery music
constant beat
music layering
fast beat
non-digetic narrative or speech
quiet end



Limitless:
silence
loud bangs
sudden sound
quiet ticking clock in background building up
banging getting slightly faster
quiet speech in background begins
louder bang and narrative starts
mellow melancholy quiet noise
faster banging and mechanical drills
digital sounds
non digetic up-beat music
quiet low sounds
parallel foley sounds of police cars
parallel sound and gun shots

(I couldn't find the opening scene or sequence on youtube or the internet so I instead watched it using my DVD that I have because I've already seen and have the film)

When looking at all four of these opening sequences collectively we can see there are a lot of commonly used aspects of music in the thriller genre. For example I can happily say that repetitive deep melancholy downbeat music is used a lot. As well as the use of it being quiet or silent. Furthermore there is a high use of ambient, foley, parallel and non-digetic sounds. This brings me on to the narration or  voice over of the main protagonist which we only hear in one of the four examples; however from personal experience I know that this is in fact used commonly within thrillers. This loud, deep, mellow sounds are repeated through the thrillers as seen in the four examples, along with the build up of the sound level rising. This is to reflect the tension in how it is rising and coming to a climax, therefore raising audience suspicion, tension, anxiety and mystery.