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

Question 1:

An Eerie LocationThis element of our thriller opening sequence, conforms to the conventions of a typical thriller. Most thrillers of the sub genre we chose to focus on - which was conspiracy/psychological thriller - contain mysterious or even unrecognisable locations, that cause the audience to feel uneasy or apprehensive about what is going to happen. Examples of this are seen in the thriller Shutter Island (2010) and Inception (2010)

Furthermore, the weather of this particular scene is also a convention of a thriller. Although it isn’t raining, the clouds provide the audience with connotations of the rain.

DetectivesJohn our main character was a detective and the flashback scene in our opening sequence was a flashback from his job. Detectives or the involvement of the police in general, is a clear convention of any thriller and this is why we chose to use this convention. Firstly, to establish to the audience that our film is a thriller, but secondly for narrative purposes. Detectives are seen in films such as Se7en (1995), The Lives of Others (2006) and even The Dark Knight (2008)

EditingThe use of colour tints in our media product isn't a convention of a thriller. Generally, in order for the audience to a change in the atmosphere, mise-en-scene and more subtle editing techniques are used instead. For example, in Se7en, for the audience to notice the protagonist was in danger the colour red was seen everywhere - In opening sequence of The Lives of Others, there was a subtle green wash over the shot. Therefore, we challenged this particular convention.

The choice of camera shots

In our thriller opening sequence we used:

An establishing shot A close up

A mid-shot An establishing shot

The choice of camera angles/movements

These are all elements of cinematography that are typical of a thriller, this is because these shots either reveal everything - an establishing shot - or reveal only a fraction of what could be occurring during the scene - an extreme close up - and the purpose of these shots is to create a sense of mystery. If the audience see everything they feel as though they are ‘in on the act’, however the contrasting close-up shots and mid-shots, counteract this and provide the audience will little information, which leaves the audience guessing, and this is the sole purpose of a thriller; to keep the audience guessing.

An over-the-shoulder shot

SoundtrackAn important element of our thriller opening

sequence is the soundtrack; non-diegetic music is heard throughout our opening sequence and this again is a clear convention of a real thriller film media product, as it adds to the suspense and

tension that a thriller is meant to convey to the producers chosen target audience.

Overall..In conclusion, I think that our media product doesn’t challenge the conventions of a real thriller film product but in fact, conforms to the conventions of a thriller and uses these narrative techniques.

I my opinion, the reason why we chose not to challenge the conventions of a thriller is due to the fact that, in order to successfully encode our representations and our narrative for the audience to decode, the execution of our media product needed to be clear, so that our target audience could follow our narrative, and the way in which we achieved this, was through utilising the conventions of a real thriller media product.