1: In what ways does your media product use, develop

or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

Setting/Location

I decided to set the thriller opening in the country side because in one way it makes it feel quite suspicious but it also seems quite normal. People believe things don’t happen in the countryside but that’s why it sets up and enigma. My first shot is a pan in the courtyard of the man’s house, he drives in quite confidently so that we guess that it is his house.

CostumeIn the death shots the victims are wearing clothes suitable to there age, for example the young boy is wearing a brightly coloured top and jeans, where the older by is wearing a dark navy top with jeans. The two younger girls are in there uniform to give you and idea of their age and the older girl is wearing a hooded jumper that clearly says the word netball so she does sport at her school which is stated on her jumper.The main character is wearing a trench styled jacket a cap that people typically wear in the countryside, dark Blue cord jeans and trainers. I thought why would he dress up if he was going out to kill someone. The costume I devised was also not meant to be very appealing either, so maybe suggests that he lives alone and doesn’t need to dress up.

Props

Props are a vital part of my thriller as they feature mainly at the end of the opening when everything becomes clearer. We get the idea of what he has done when we see the tools come out of his bag, which he has from the beginning. We can tell that he has done something with them when he takes them out and studies them.

Camerawork and Editing

I used a variety of camera shots when shooting the dead bodies. I tried to have one close up to every mid shot and I put in a few long shots as well to show where the bodies were and the positioning of them too. I used a range of video camera shots like panning, zooms and tracking shots.

Title font

I looked at other typewriter fonts, like Courier, but thought their lines were too clean and precise.  I thought that the look of this typewriter font was best, as it has splodges and looks untidy which gives the viewers a sense of unease. I only have a blank background when the title comes up because I didn’t want it to distract away from the film and it gives you time to think about what has just happened in the sequence before hand.

For the rest of the titles for the film crew I did them in a different font from the name of the film called ‘chalkduster’. This is still a sans serif font which has connotations of realism. I got the idea from the film ‘Seven’ where only the names of the crew and the actors of this kind of font.

I was inspired to do the black background in black by ‘Usual Suspect’ but it is also in the thriller ‘No country for old men’

Link to ‘Seven’

How the opening sets up the thrillerI got the idea for the from the film ‘The Third Man’, which is an old, well-known thriller from 1949. The pictures in ‘The third Man’ built up an enigma and so I thought that they would in mine too. The beginning does tell much about the thriller but the man is clearly a main character and that the thriller will be partly about him.

I got the idea for the low angle shots from the film ‘Usual Suspects’ where there is a man walking around a body and you get the sense that he is the one you should follow in the film and that he isn’t a nice person.

Link to clip

Genre and how the opening suggests it

I think that the photos are the first real indication that it is a thriller, they are quite clearly dead but the photos don’t suggest in anyway how the characters die and So that sets up the first enigma. When we see the first shot of the car come into the courtyard we cant see straight away who the characters is, whether it is a man or a woman even.

Continuity editing- Casino Royale

Link to actual clip

In continuity editing everything is filmed so that the viewer thinks they are seeing continuous action. You need to ensure that characters’ appearance, the set and the lighting (colour and direction) remain consistent from shot to shot.

In my narrative sequence I have followed the rules of continuity editing like the 180 degree rule, the 30 degree rule, eye-line match and shot reverse shot, but I have also unsettled the audience by framing the character so you cannot always see his face.

Production company logoConventionally in films they would open with the production company logo as some kind of branding, for example:

I made my own production company, ‘Hopping Mad’ , which I decided would have been co-producers with New Line (part of the Warner company). Co-production is needed in order to fund films. New Line also act as distributors.

Thriller films from novels

Producing thrillers from existing books build on the marketing and popularity of the original novel and often carry the book-reading audience with it. This boosts the viewing numbers considerably as the world are reading books less. Examples of books turned into films are:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Sin City Hostage

Intercutting credits and actions

I got the idea for intercutting from a number of thrillers such as ‘Syriana’

CreditsI’ve compared the credits with the film ‘Speed’ we have similar crew title like Director, Producer, Composer and Editor.

The title of the film ‘Speed’ does move like mine but it has been made to zoom in ‘at speed’ (as the title suggests) whilst my film title clicks on like a camera shutter.