Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media production?

Thriller movies captivate their audience by creating suspense and tension. A typical narrative for a thriller movie will make the audience feel that the events could happen to them, it will often start with "norm” and shows ordinary life. Then an event will often happen that will 'thrill' the audience something such as a murder, kidnap or a crime. This then leads the protagonist on a mission to find the antagonist and solve any problems that may have appeared. This often involves fights, explosions and weapons such as guns and knives. Once the protagonist has discovered the identity of the antagonist he will seek revenge or resolve the issues. The setting for this is often in a city and different locations within the city; if the characters are taken to different locations this can often add more suspense, as it is often an unknown location so the character is unsure of what may happen.

                                                                           

There are different thriller sub genres including psychological thriller they often use people’s fears to create a tense atmosphere. Another type of thriller is a Conspiracy thriller this type of thriller often involves a mystery to be solved and can be historical and based on fact, this can create a scare factor as it makes people feel the even could happen to them. The sub-genre that we chose was a mystery thriller this meant that we needed to create a lot of enigmas and a mystery. We did this through the use of a dual narrative and the audience had to piece together what was happening. Dual narratives are quite conventional in thrillers as they can help to create the tension and suspense that they want in the thriller, they can be useful to create tension as you can see what is happening in two different places and keep cutting in-between them both. The audience can expect to always be trying to answer question throughout the thriller and be trying to piece together what is happening throughout and what the outcome will be.

You may also say that our thriller is a hybrid of a mystery thriller and a crime thriller; as a young girl is kidnaped and goes missing although I would not say that this is the focus point of the opening . The part we want the audience to focus on is the mystery element and trying to piece together what is happening and where the girl is now.

                                                                                                                                                      

To create an effective thriller we needed to make sure that we included conventions typical convention for a thriller such as:

 

Editing

conventional editing for thrillers is usually very fast paced, this helps to create tension for the audience. Another way they do this is through jump cuts this can disorientate the audience and make them question what is going on. Short cuts can also be used to help create mystery as the audience can’t fully see what is going on and will be trying to piece together what is going on. When editing a thriller you must also consider the continuity, you may want to try and disorientate the audience but they still need to be able to understand what is going on; you need to consider things like the 180° rule. When filming we had to consider the 180° rule, this is when you keep to one side of what you are filming, if not this can cause confusion for the audience and make them question what is going on or where they are. You can see clearly with these screenshots that we kept the 180° rule; the line we chose was to be directly through the actors and kept to one side of them so it did not cause confusion for the audience. Our editing was conventional as we also used fast paced editing to help create tension.  When cutting between the narratives we made sure that the cuts were fast and also that the shots were not on screen or very long so that the audience were also questioning what they just saw.
 

Sound

Different sub- genres of thrillers use different types of music; typically psychological thrillers will use string instruments to create sharp tense sounds that will build to a climax. Spy thrillers will use more base instruments; sometimes they use them to create heart beat sounds to show the fast pace. For the sound in our thriller I created a montage of non-diegetic sounds, I used missing person phone calls and reports, I then added a sound track to the background. I need to make sure that the sound built and matched the high point of the actions in the film. The sound was effective for our thriller as it helped the audience understand what was happening and also make it realistic and this also created tension as it would make the audience feel the events could happen to them as they are real missing person phone calls. The sound is asynchronous sound as is does not match the actions in the screen, although it is relevant to the piece.

Shots

Typical shots for thrillers are close ups and extreme close ups, they are used in thrillers as they create mystery, by not being able to view everything in shot the audience will begin to question their surroundings. A thriller opening that does this effectively is Seven, they use a range of close ups in there titles, you question what is happening and what the objects in shot are. This creates mystery from the start and is creating enigmas for the audience. In a thriller opening it may also be effective to use establishing shots or long shots; you are then able to establish the setting. In our opening we used a duel narrative and included a range of shots. To begin with we used a close up shots to make the audience question what is happening, we then moved to long and mid shots this made the audience more aware of what was happening; and they were then able to piece together the story.

 You can see that at the beginning we used close ups and you are unsure of what is happening. You can see the photos of the girl and the match being lit but this creates enigmas as to why all of the pictures if the girl are there.  You then begin to see the mid shots ad are able to piece together what is happening and see that they girl is about to be captured.

Mise-en-scene

Costume
A Typical costume for a thriller is usually casual and natural clothing. This makes the event happening seem more realistic for the audience. Clothing will usually be dark colours to reflect the mood such as black connoting death and danger. You can see clearly here that the antagonist’s in Panic Room and dressed all in black and this helps to show that they are bad and mean harm on the people in the house. For our thriller we had a young girl in school uniform, this made her look younger and more vulnerable, the stalker was in all black, this helped to show his danger. Lighting
Most thrillers use low key lighting, this creates mystery by creating things such as shadows. Low key lighting is also creates mystery by hiding things; if the setting is dark and not everything in shot is visible the audience will question what they can’t see.  Most of our thriller was filmed in natural lighting; this meant that the quality as the footage was much clearer and prevented grade. Natural lighting is effective as audience could clearly understand what was happening as they had to piece together what was going on.
Actor
The protagonist (victim) in most thrillers is usually a weak person to show their vulnerability, and this is a common stereotype in most thrillers. Antagonists are usually a more dominate character, they are mostly males and this may make them appear stronger, we also chose to use a male actor that was an older that the victim, this helped to show that he was much more powerful than her and showed how weak and vulnerable she was.     
Makeup
Make up in thrillers will usually only be something like cuts or bruising on the protagonist; this shows they have become weak and are struggling. The only make up that we used was add a mud effect to the protagonist's face after she fell over, this just showed how frantic and panicked she was.   
Props
Most props for thrillers will be weapons; weapons for thrillers will usually be more small sinister weapons than something like guns in action movies.  For our thriller the props we used were gloves, rope and a drug like substance; we only showed the antagonist holding them like he was preparing for something and it was only suggestive. This helped create mystery as the audience would never know what was going to be done with the props.
Setting
Thriller settings are usually realistic settings this makes the events happening at the settings more realistic and could make every day setting scarier for them. Some settings are often more deserted to show that the characters are alone and that the protagonist is isolated. Our thriller was set in a wood, we chose this setting as it shows that the antagonist is alone and protagonist is provided with space to hide to sneak up on the victim. The woods can also show isolation as the protagonist is all aloe creating a sense of fear from them as their is no one there to help them.

 

A thriller that helped inspire us for characters was Man On Fire, we felt that the use of you a young girl was really effective, it showed how innocent she was and that she needed protecting. In Man On Fire the young girl has a body guard looking after her, we felt that for her to make her completely alone  and helpless would be more effective and the audience would become more connected and worried for her.

 

Soon The Darkness is a thriller that inspired us for story line and setting, Soon The Darkness is a thriller about to girls on holiday, while in the woods they get separated and soon discover someone is following them. Our thriller also follows a similar story line, you see the girl being followed and eventual being captured. We felt a tory line like this was effective as  it creates as it creates a lot of enigmas and mystery.  As you do not know a lot about either of the characters and you do not know why one is tying to capture the other. We also found that the woods was a good setting as it also could create mystery as it can create enigmas by not knowing what is around the corner. Another thriller that inspired us for a setting was cabin in the woods, we felt that the setting of he woods made it really eerie and helped to create mystery.

For typography a titles we really like the typography of Seven. Seven used a scratchy font and we felt that is was very effective it made it look very psychotic and that is the type of character we wanted the antagonist to come across as and we felt reflected his character well. The titles just slowly faded in and out when appropriate. We showed names such as director first as they were what we thought more important jobs, and what the audience would want to see first. 

 

The thriller we made was quite conventional and we create a typical mystery thriller, we made it conventional by the use of shot type. We used a lot f close ups and extreme close ups, this helps to create a feeling of claustrophobia and feeling trapped for the audience making them feel uncomfortable; it also helps to create mystery as not everything is shown in the shot. We then started to show more mid shots and long shots this then helped the audience to piece together what was happening. we called the thriller Missing as we felt it would have the audience already questioning what or who is missing and how will it be resolved. The typography used for the title was the same as the titles, we used the same scratchy font as we liked the psychotic effect. When we showed the titles we also showed a missing poster of the protagonist and this would then show the audience who is missing, and possibly answer and questions they had from watching the opening.  

 

The costume was also conventional as it was just every day clothing, the antagonist was dressed in all black this connoted he may be a dangerous character. The protagonist was in school uniform this helped to show the age different in characters and also the she was the weaker one, and it wouldn’t be difficult for her to be captured.  The props used were also typical of a thriller, the props were mostly weapons or things that could be used to capture the protagonist, we chose not to use weapons such as guns as we did not want it to seem to much like an action thriller. The location was a wood and we felt that woods were a good location as they can allow for more mystery as you do not know what will happen as you may not know what is coming or going to happen.

When editing we ensured that it would create tension and it’s typical for thrillers to do this. The editing was fast pace and this meant that the audience would be able to see how fast pace it is and a scene of urgency, and that the girl needed to get away as fast as she could. To help build the pace we made a montage of sound clips that built on another and made the tension build. The montage of sound it made up of phone calls and missing person reports, this helps as it reflects what is happening on screen.