Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions?

Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions?

When researching into a thriller we that the genre is on that looks to unnerve the audience and create high amounts of tension amongst the audience. We found that when looking into thrillers the use of violence and playing psychological games on the audience helped build the tension and we knew we had to use this in our thriller opening. The inspiration for idea came from researching the thriller genre in detail and watching thriller opening such as Se7en and Dexter and this helped give us an idea of what to expect and what we should include in our thriller opening. The use of researching and watching other thrillers helped us as a group to come up with an idea for our thriller and we took a lot of inspiration from other thrillers, especially Dexter.

The typical conventions the audience expects to see in a thriller opening are glimpses of what to expect in the film that follows and to do this we have to attract the audience by following the conventions and using things such as violence, suspense, tension, the unknown, weapons, anxiety and excitement. These are all convention that the thriller world uses in almost every thriller film and we have to follow these conventions to secure a high grade and achieve a professionalism feel to our thriller. This is it is important to do our research as we found out what our audience expects to see and from this we created an idea and felt it was vital to incorporate these conventions and our audiences views into our thriller to produce a likeable but professional thriller opening.

There are a number of sub-genres for the thriller genre, a lot of sub-genres that are associated with the thriller genre are: action thriller, psychological thriller, sci-fi thriller, crime thriller. For our thriller we chose the sub-genre of a psychological thriller. This is because our thriller used lot of jump cuts and fades to help create tension; this would help unnerve the audience. Our thriller has a psychological sub-genre due to the confusion of who the killer is and what his motive is and we created this confusion by using jump cuts. Also our thriller used these effects and it help create a sense of mystery, which is a convention heavily associated with the thriller genre. Although this mystery helps our products and helps portray the choice of the sub-genre which we chose is psychological; this is because the jump cuts and flashes we use in our production will keep the audience guessing and this will be playing psychological games.

Typical shots that are commonly found in thrillers are shots such as close ups, mid shots and extreme close ups. The extreme close ups are used to really add tension and unnerve our audience as they portray a lot of detail but prevent the audience from seeing the whole picture, it creates a sense of claustrophobia and creates the convention of tension. The shot used will show some sort of action on screen and will have clues linked to the thriller and will play the psychological games on the minds of the audience as they will be tense as they will be create scenarios in their heads of what to expect. The close ups in thrillers are used to make the audience feel uncomfortable as they show more detail and are usually used to show facial expressions and we used this to show our victim’s  facial expression and this shows the terror in his face due to the violence being inflicted on him. The mid shots in thrillers are used to show the movements of characters and action unfolding.

As for editing there are shots fast paced editing creating tension, Flashbacks and fade to black/white are often used as well these add tension because they show other action which helps to develop our narrative. Mise-en-scene in typical thrillers, the setting is usually quite secluded creating a sense of being trapped. The costumes in thrillers can vary depending on what type of character for example in the transporter films Jason Statham always wears a suit, this shows he is professional. A lot of the time victims wear white clothes to show their innocence and symbolise their purity. The lighting in thrillers is usually low key, with a lot of shadows this helps to create an atmosphere in the thriller. Also props in thrillers are usually dangerous and realistic, with some connotation to the narrative.

The narrative of our thriller is of a psychologically genre and an unstable killer who‘s making a everyday routine look sinister and then we find out the killer is sinister as he’s captured a young male but we don’t know what his motive is. This opening we created will give our audience a glimpse of what to expect in the movie as a lot of violence is present in the first few minutes and an exciting climax is building which will make the viewers want to watch to figure out the motive for this killing.

For our thriller opening we had to follow some rules and we learnt these rules in class and they were rules like the golden mean and rule of thirds. The rule of thirds, which can be seen above, is a rule that needs to be followed as it keeps the action in the centre of the screen to help draw the audience’s attention to the important aspects on screen. The other rule is the golden mean which we had to follow and this is where the action follows a line diagonal across the screen and this bring the attention of the audience to important features on the screen.

As for sound in our production we spent a considerate amount of time researching into sound and what would make our thriller be a success. We found that the music needed to be fast tempo’d when the violence was present on screen to create the tension and build up fear amongst the audience. We found that often orchestral instruments created the best effect for short snippets of sound, followed by a loud impacting instrument like a drum. The sound that can be heard in our thriller was our own soundtrack created on Garage Band and is all non-diegetic sound. We felt this worked well as we didn’t have a substantial budget to work with to access a soundtrack or create the music from using microphones etc. I felt the use of Garage Band helped us as a group as we could use it to our advantage by making the soundtrack fit our production by creating tension by upping the tempo when violence was present on screen. This would help create tension amongst our audience as the upping n the tempo will make them suggest danger is present. We found this was used in other thrillers and helped us create the professionalism we wanted.

When researching into thriller we took quite a big inspiration from the film ‘DEXTER’. I found the narrative of the opening sequence very exciting and used many conventions of a thriller by using violence, sinister music and also the colour red which has strong connotations with danger. As the audience I felt it kept us guessing what was going on. The use of graphic matches help portray a psychological feel to it, take the shoe lacing shot for example, this was shown as the killer in Dexter tightly pulling the laces together and it created a thought of strangulation and the use of the non-diegetic sound of the sinister soundtrack helped tell us as the audience there was something more to this shot than just a shoe being tied. We took inspiration from this and incorporated the graphic matches to make a normal daily routine look/feel sinister.

The images that can be seen above are examples of what I think are quite similar shots from our thriller and ‘Dexter’. The shot on the right is from our thriller and the shot on the left is from Dexter, I felt they share similarities as they are both everyday routines that most people follow but the way they have been portrayed on screen make it feels sinister. The sinister nature is portrayed through the close ups which are commonly used in thrillers and the sinister feel comes from the tightness the gloves and they laces are being pulled.

In our thriller we stuck to the conventions of a thriller by using things such as flashbacks, close ups and midshots. We also used a lot of violence and excitement within our thriller as these are typical conventions found within thrillers. In addition in our research we found out about flashbacks, we liked the idea of the flashbacks with quick cuts as it helped develop the narrative, this was one of the conventions we studied in our research, we decided to use a fade to black in this section during the strangulation this helps show the life draining out of him, this is one of the conventions that we looked at and thought we should include. As for other things like camerawork we used a variety of shots but mainly mid-shots and close ups, close ups as shown are used mainly on the victim, this was because it helps show them being trapped and this brings across a sense of fear for the audience. This is seen in many films especially "Dexter" what we studied. 

In our thriller we did a lot of research and focused on mise-en-scene, the reason for this was we wanted to create a professional looking thriller. We used low key lighting by using the dim feature on the camera and this gave us a low-key feel to our thriller and made our shots darker which is a common convention of a thriller film. Also during editing we enhanced some shots to show only what we wanted the viewer to see, for example in the knife scene, we don't want them to see the identity of our killer so we darkened the background. Make up was used on Zak only, as you can see in this scene here Zak's face has blood on it, this was done using red food colouring and soya sauce which gave us very realistic results as you can see. Acting was difficult due to us all being very inexperienced but compares it with our prelim and you can see significant differences, overall I look a lot more serious and professional. In addition Zak portrays his weakness well due to his facial expressions showing his fear, but also his body language. 

When deciding our location we knew from our research that we need to have a location where it would be quiet and away from the public eye as that’s what a stereotypical thriller location is about. As you can see in the shots above a sense of entrapment as the surroundings look rather secluded and this will create a sense of claustrophobia amongst the audience as they feel as though they are trapped in the location like the victim.

When it came to deciding the costumes for our thriller we did a lot of research into the costume and the costumes of our victim and killer. As for the killer we decided to use of suit because we wanted to create a sophisticated look for him as we wanted to play the psychological games on the minds of our audience. We decided that for the killer we would use an all black suit as when doing our research we found that when referring to thriller the colour black has connotations with danger and evil and we wanted to create these messages for our killer. This is why the colour black was used as our audience can create assumptions on our killer and give them an idea of the type of character he is. The image of our killer’s costume can be seen below.

As for the victim’s costume we did a lot of research into and we achieved the best we could from the victim’s costume. We found that a stereotypical costume for a thriller victim consists of very little clothing and if any clothing, it is very thin clothing. As for the costume we used for the victim was to be a casual outfit which is to show the link with the killer of the normality that is shown in our opening. The casual look appeals to our psychographics of mainstreamers by wearing an everyday look. This will give the audience something to link with and will also unnerve the audience as they will feel this type of violence can happen to anyone. Also we did our research into a typical victim’s costume and realised the colour white was used almost all the time. The colour white has connotations with innocence and purity and this shows the character’s innocence. Also the tears in the white shirt show that the character’s purity had been torn apart and had it taken away from him. Also the thin white shirt shows the character’s little protection and the use of the red trainers helped as the colour red has connotations with blood and danger and this will unnerve our audience. A picture of our victim’s costume can be seen below.