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

As thrillers go there are a number of typical conventions that make them instantly recognisable, as being a film of that genre, these conventions can be seen through the use of all four film mediums: Mise-en-scene, Editing, Cinematography and Soundtrack.

Mise-en-scene

Low lighting in a Thriller film is used to make the audience feel uneasy so in our film we decided to use a place that has a very eerie lighting to it already. The car park we have used has lights but they miss the corners and certain parts of the car park, so therefore at night there are blind spots all around which makes the audience uneasy because lot of people have a fear of the unknown. This therefore gives our film that gritty and edgy we want to achieve.

In the thriller films we chose to look at closely and take some strong inspirations from they show a big theme of blood, which is why our film involves this thriller convention. For example if you watch the clip from Pulp Fiction below from 2:48 they use blood to impact there audience as is a horrible image and they wish to shock there audience. This is very similar to our film attempts to do with the scenes of death, blood and sick.



Cinematography

We used long shots in our film to give the audience a sense of isolation of the two characters. The long shots show the setting and the state of the characters which gives the audience a small insight to what has gone on. We then used close ups to give closer more detailed clues to the audience which will give them a bigger insight to what has gone on.

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Editing

In certain parts of out film the editing is quick and very fasted paced. This is to make the audience feel what the characters feel. For example the girl is scared but her adrenaline really kicks in when she begins to run away from the scene of the crime. Therefore the editing conveys the idea of panic and adrenaline to the audience who then because of the editing feel how the character is feeling. One of the best examples of our film editing is in the video underneath, it's quick but the continuous editing is what we have focused on. When I step back the cuts are near perfect and it looks really effective.



Soundtrack

We carefully picked our music so that we could edit our shots to the bass notes of the soundtrack. It starts of slow paced and calm and as the girl finds out more and more as well as the audience does the music becomes more intense which reflects again the mood and the panic the character is in. At the end of our film a heartbeat kicks in and the screen fades to black before the title at the end. This creates tension in the audience as they can hear the panic in the characters heartbeat and it forebodes trouble.



Our opening sequence therefore does follow the basic well known conventions of a Thriller film. For example our main themes involve blood, death and a very mysterious storyline. It makes the audience ask questions from the very beginning and keeps them engaged to the very end. In Thrillers films is is crucial to add mystery to the situation the characters find themselves in because it involves the audience in the storyline and makes them think about where the film is going. The only thing that's challenged the conventions of a Thriller is that we've used as strong female character the same way the makers of 'The disappearance of Alice Creed' have done. We did this so that we could include different female characteristic into our protagonist. She, like Alice Creed is very clued up and 'street smart', instead of using that typical violence we see in many thriller films like Se7en.

(Alice Creed and Our character)