Question 1:In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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

The task

As a group we were given a task to create a thriller opening in the space of 2 minutes. This included creating a narrative in addition to this; we had to create a storyboard once we had a clear vision of how our thriller would be. Through all the research we’ve been doing, we had to use elements such as cinematography, editing, Mise en scene, sound to follow the conventions of a thriller. I think our group was successful in creating a conventional opening thriller because we had an original narration.

I’ve used generic conventions of a thriller film to create an emotive experience towards my target audience. I used filming elements such cinematography, Mise en scene and editing to represent not only the characters but to support the narrative. Some of the shot I used such as close ups creates emphasis towards an emotion or mood. In addition shots such as medium make it easier for the audience as they can identify their costume and body language. This creates irony for the audience as they will have some sense of what will happen to each character or what they’re like.

The main use of sound is to set the atmosphere so that it relates to the narration and the mood and emotions of the characters. The location we picked is a forest therefore we expect to hear non diegetic sounds such as twigs cracking/snapping and owls howling. These kinds of sounds are conventional because it builds tension for the audience.

Location also helps as we used a forest which makes it easier for a victim to be targeted and a him/her to escape. The location is also more mysterious and isolated making it conventional to the thriller genre.
 

Generic conventions of a thriller

I carried out a lot of research in successful thrillers as it is important to follow generic conventions of a thriller because the audience need to identify what genre the film is in by looking at film elements. I did further research into thriller genre such as narrative structure and themes, character representations and age certifications. All thriller films use similar generic conventions that are use to have a certain impact on the impact just like other genres for e.g. comedy’s aims are to make the audience laugh.

One of many films I analysed was ‘scream’ within this movie it has a perfect example on cinematography such as establishing shot to set the scene and close ups for reactions and iconography. Research in other films was extremely important as it enabled me to make a successful thriller.

My 2 minute thriller opening follows the themes of, torture, love and death in order to create a successful thriller related narrative. Using young adults are also generic conventions of a thriller because they create various emotions from the audience for example feeling uncomfortable, anger towards a certain character or even sympathy.

As we filmed in the forest starting at 3 we instantly had low key lighting therefore we not have to rely on artificial lighting as it save us time however we had to use our time efficiently otherwise it would get too dark.