Question 1

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

A typical thriller contains an exciting plot, involving crime or espionage; this is typified by quick shots and editing and gradual music to build the tension, these are common in films such as Psycho, this can suddenly change pace at any time to show action or a point of interest. The main aim of a thriller is to make the audience feel uncomfortable and shock them by showing them events they wouldn’t expect to witness. Filmmakers use many different subgenres to categorise their films, some of the main ones are: psychological, violent, crime. To a certain extent our production follows the traditional conventions of a thriller as we featured a ‘damsel in distress’ character being killed, and our film is a deliberate cliché as we filmed her being tied onto a train track, with an oncoming train building the tension. We got this idea from early 20^th century films such as “The Perils of Pauline” and “The Gold Rush”, these were silent films in black and white but they effectively created tension, and this is what we wanted to replicate in our film. We did originally think about shooting our film in black and white and having it silent, but we decided that this was too cliché and could run the risk of almost being comical, so instead we decided to put an effect on our film which would create the darkness and tension necessary to make our film effective; this shows evidence of developing our ideas.

      

 

                      

 

Here’s a brief list of the typical conventions of a thriller:

A crime at the core of the narrative (often murder, but not necessarily)
There is usually a crime in the narrative or storyline of a thriller; it keeps the viewer hooked.

A complex narrative structure, with false paths, clues and resolutions
Thrillers are usually made up of these. Mainly to keep the audience questioning, and to make them work out what’s going on, leaving strong enigmas

A narrative pattern of establishing enigmas which the viewer expects to be resolved.
This will keep the viewer hooked and he/she will always want to see the resolutions.

Extraordinary events happening in ordinary situations.
This will enable the audience to relate to the situation, and therefore the effect will be stronger.

Themes of identity.
This is used so the audience can keep tabs on each character, who they are, and why they’re there. It also helps us identify the protagonist and antagonist.

Mise en scene which echoes/mirrors the protagonist’s plight
The mise-en-scene is very important, and needs to be relevant e.g. if the character is happy, put them in a happy place, with bright lights, or if the character is sad, put them in a sad place with dark lighting.

Although we have followed some conventions of thrillers, these conventions were quite out-dated, so our film could be considered to be retro. We challenged conventions by filming our short clip in multiple locations; this is not usually done which emphasises the fact that we wanted to follow the original conventions of thrillers, but add our own twist to them. We also watched many modern thrillers such as: No Country for Old Men, Leon, The Terminator, etc. we did this to give use a modern scope to integrate into our production. We couldn’t rely on solely basing our ideas from films nearly 100 years old as they didn’t have all the cameras and equipment necessary to make an effective modern thriller, so we watched some modern ones to broaden our horizons which would allow us to develop our ideas further; this allowed us to add modern camera and editing techniques such as flashbacks to our thriller – these are ubiquitous in modern films. Our production also follows the conventions of a thriller with the way we worked our cameras and editing; we used quick shots between the action and the oncoming train to build tension and to make the audience feel uncomfortable as they know something bad will inevitably happen, we also did this to constantly remind the audience of the impending danger.

Our music was very conventional as it was quiet, background music which didn’t interfere with the other concepts in our thriller; it’s similar to the music featured in films such as “Psycho” where it would gradually build tension to make the audience feel uncomfortable. Where we challenged the sound conventions was we included a narrative from a poem called ‘Cousin Kate’ we used this as a main base for our production as we called our production ‘Kate’s revenge’. This shows that we based all our ideas around a single piece of text; this is very unconventional as this isn’t usually done; filmmakers usually base their ideas on lots of different things, we purposely went against this to challenge conventions and to make our production more unique.

 

For a thriller to be truly effective it needs to abide by and challenge conventions in a way which attracts the audience and keeps them enthralled, some techniques that filmmakers use to do this include: dual narrative, flashbacks, etc. flashbacks are notably more prevalent in thrillers with films such as Total Recall and Pulp fiction featuring them.

 

Flashbacks are an integral part of these two films so we sought this as inspiration for our thriller as flashbacks also tend to follow the traditional conventions of thrillers. Looking at the titles of the two films along with ours it’s blatantly obvious that all of the titles are extremely different in their design; this highlights the fact that it’s difficult to follow or challenge the conventions of a title cover as they are all different in the way they come across to the consumers. We discovered this so we tried to make our titles as unique as possible.

One way with which we followed the conventions was with our props as we had the killer wearing the typical criminal attire; balaclava, gloves, trainers, etc.

 

 

 

This shot is quite conventional as it clearly shows the killers assertion of power and dominance over the weak victim; this is signified by the over the shoulder shot we used to ensure the audience views it from the killers’ perspective – giving the audience biased perspectives, which we did to emphasise the killer’s power. We also used quick editing to speed up the pace of this scene which would intensify the tension of this scene. The mise-en-scene is also conventional as everything in this shot is what you would expect to see in a typical thriller production; as we used the typical characters, followed a basic plot, had the killer wielding a weapon, and the camera and editing compliments the scene as it increases the tension and makes the audience feel uncomfortable – this is essential for an effective thriller production and is popular in titles such as Sin City.

   

This shot was taken from the film Psycho, one of the most illustrious thriller productions of all time; this shot is similar in following conventions as it effectively shows the balance of power the director wanted to convey, just like we did with our scene. The audience cannot see both of the protagonists’ faces, this has been done to conceal their identities which create a sense of mystery, the lighting and the way the water is positioned is also used to achieve this. The mise-en-scene is conventional as it features a traditional prop with a knife, but the camera angle, the costumes, and the setting is unconventional as they aren’t often featured in thrillers.