Research and planning; into crime thrillers

After deciding within our group that we would create a crime thriller, I decided to do some extra research specific to this genre of film.
To further my knowledge on this film genre, I chose to watch a few more films, for example; Final Destination, Sweeney Todd, The Fast and the Furious, Miami Vice and Seven because these are crime thrillers and so would help me to pick out some of the conventions commonly used.
I was able to notice that all of the crime thriller films I had watched all followed similar conventions in the opening scenes;
Dull, gloomy, often rainy settings.
Rebelling gangs; with guns and drugs for instance.
Good guys Vs Bad guys.
Few or no women present in the first opening minutes.
Twists in the story lines.
Spooky music to being with the titles commonly on a black background; non-diagetic music.
A character of importance, in authoritative clothing. Close ups are used of their hand, or an object of importance for the storyline as well.

This convention of having an object of importance inspired our idea to have a focus point in our film too.
This was later decided to be a book; containing previously murdered, innocent girls. Also, having a figure of authority appealed to us as a convention; however we chose this as our convention that we wished to challenge. Instead of having a male figure of authority, we decided that we would include a female for our film.


This clip of final destination shows some of these conventions used, such as; red titles, dark, gloomy lighting and the main focus in the opening was also males.


This trailer from Sweeney Todd shows the typical innocent, female victims in white in a dark, mysterious setting as well as repeatedly showing an object of importance in a close-up shot; the barber razor blade of which he uses to commit the murders.
A few statistics from Sweeney Todd are;
- Domestic Total Gross: $52,898,073
- Distributor: Paramount (DreamWorks)
- Genre: Musical
- MPAA Rating: R
- Release Date: December 21, 2007
- Runtime: 1 hrs. 56 min.
- Production Budget: $50 million
- Opening Weekend: $9,300,805
(#5 rank, 1,249 theaters, $7,446 average)
% of Total Gross: 17.6%
- Widest Release: 1,507 theaters
- Close Date: March 20, 2008
- In Release: 91 days / 13 weeks