Music used 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




What have I learned from my group members work?

I have leaned that depending on which sub genre of thriller it is depends of the type of music and or sound effects played. For example, I can see that Limitless which is a mystery/psychological thriller, uses music and sound effects to build tension for the audience. This has been done by the use of bangs getting louder and quicker as this could create the effect of signifying someones heart beat and as tension and mystery builds it gets more intense. However, the sci-fi thriller Seven uses different sound effects and music. For example it uses effects such as static, robotic and electric sounds which gives the effect of reinforcing that is is a sic-fi thriller as these sounds are quite futuristic.