DRAFT Question 1

EvaluationQ1) In what ways does does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Costume: Our female character wears slightly smudged lipstick, referencing the generic convention of the femme fatale, but challenging the idea of vulnerability with her

casually modern outfit and her determined persona. Referencing Psycho’s Marian with having her being

determined and quite strong-willed.

Body Language: We tried to create a sense of anxiety and nervousness with our female character, but not portraying her

to be weak. Instead, her relentless attempts to escape associates her as someone who is a strong-willed and

determined character, referencing aspects of Thelma and Louise in their strength and authority.

Props: The Newspaper we used to frame, in the foreground, the bottom of the shot where our male character enters the house for the first time in the background.

The prop was our creative way to subtly introduce the title of our film into the scene. Also, as it’s presumed the house is the male character’s the idea of ‘The

Unseeable’ resting on his furniture may be seen to reflect his intentions and sums up this character:

How he’s unnoticed by society, and goes around unsuspected, when underneath this, is the hostage of the young woman.

Costume: The male suit costume relates to him being unsuspecting and a ‘normal’ looking character, with the idea

of him walking back home on a regular day. A sense of sophistication with the suit costume also adding to the idea

of him being a regular person, someone you wouldn’t associate with what appears to happen.

Body Language: The character persona we created was intended to appear normal an unsuspecting, similar to

Norman Bates in Psycho. As a viewer, you don’t truly see his face until the last scenes. We chose to do this in order to

create an anonymous figure, the sense of being unidentifiable.

Also, the clenching fist shot we chose to add in connotes this underlying threat and how his

intentions are vicious and at this point; it seems to confirm the audiences perceptions of our

male character being villainous.

Appealing to the fear of the unknown with the audience seeing some of what the female character sees, but also being in the position that you can also see further and get more of an impression of her

possible fate.

EvaluationQ1) In what ways does does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Location: The choice of the small, confined alleyway. Dimly lit, with ambient street lamps, the street damp and quite grimy. Conforming to the thriller conventions of the location being

darkened and developing the male character to reflect the darkness also, with hidden intentions and connotations of mystery, leaving the audience to question his motives.

This references ‘Essex Boys’ with a similarly dark and desolate location at the beginning of the film. Establishing the criminal underworld and reflects the wrong-doings that are to

come; something we tried to capture and twist for our thriller opening. We chose to use a lonely, isolated pathway and one-source back lighting to convey a similar mood.

Lighting: The choice of lighting in the female shots was mainly non-ambient key lighting, with us having to arrange lighting presence in order to make the footage readable but also dimly lit. The use of the lighting coming under the door was using a lamp to shine under,

emphasising the approach of our male character. I think the outcome was very effective with the golden light a contrast to the darkened.

For our female character, the use of a small claustrophobic locations emphasised the panic and tension created by her entrapment. The classic thriller convention of small spaces is something we knew would be successful in portraying the young woman’s

fear of where she is and the unknown about what will happen. An extreme example of this referenced is in ‘Kill Bill 2’ where The Bride is trapped in

her grave, limited to barely any movement, yet she still manages to escape the horrible situation.

The outside shots of the male character are lit with ambient back-lighting, a thriller convention, from street lamps down the alleyway.

This backlighting silhouettes his frame well, connotes his anonymity. Referencing the introduction of Jason Locke, in ‘Essex Boys’ with

the minimalistic back-lighting, the chiaroscuro look a convention of thriller films. Reinforcing the isolation of the male characters.

EvaluationQ1) In what ways does does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Sound: Some of the aspects creating the opening to our thriller film were given to

members of our team, James Coy created and edited together our soundtrack.

Then we individually edited the soundtrack to fir our own thriller opening edits.

We kept all of our diegetic sound when filming, sometimes increasing and enhancing the volume of the clips where the male character is walking in order to make the sound clearer to the audience. We also created a sound-bridge which continues over the candidate information and the James

Rollins quote, the sound of the male character’s footsteps over the top of the fading text. This then matches visually to his movements, anticipating the scene and who and where the person is

before you see him.

Narrative Structure: Our narrative structure remains chronological in order of events, making it clear to the audience what’s happening.

Jump cuts connecting the sequences of events together. As the audience are constantly jumping from being in the presence of either the female or the male character, we edited the opening of the film together to show the lead up, leaving

it with a cliff-hanger. We felt this was the most successful way to create a clear plot-line with details included to

build the characters’ personas.

I think it compliments the onscreen activity brilliantly. The building intensity with the eye opening and the end of the piece. Due to the soundtrack being slightly longer than my edit of the film opening, I had

to clip up the soundtrack and edit it to work with the diegetic sound.

Camera Angles: When filming, we shot the same scenes and movements multiple times in different angles and sometimes altered the lighting.

EvaluationQ1) In what ways does does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Extreme close-ups are a classic thriller convention, something we used during our film. With inspiration from ‘Psycho’ of the extreme

close-up on her eye with a slight camera tilt is what we shot as she opens her eye.

I think the shot works really well in our film, the same footage used twice disorientating the audience with the cliffhanger looping back to the start, the viewer

questioning the action they've just seen, which as a thriller, I think works well.

A high angled almost over-the-shoulder shot is used in ‘Once Upon A Time America’ when Eve pulls back her duvet to see a body outline made of bullets in her mattress. It places the viewer with the character, making them feel involved with the scene and what’s happening. We placed the audience with our female character with an over-the-shoulder shot when she tries the locked

handle, kick-starting that dread and fear of her fate.

Another thriller convention in terms of camera angles is a low-angled shot, connotations of the character being authoritative and has high control. The audience having to look up to them. Our male character is often shown through a low-angled camera shot, connotations with

him having the more powerful stance.

Over-the-shoulder shots are something we used a few times during our filming also, something often used to connote placement, status or the

audience taking sides with a character.

As well as an over-the-shoulder shot with our male character so the audience perceive the danger the female character is in.

Similarly, ‘Once Upon A Time America’ is an exaggerated worms-eye view shot, although these shots are slightly different; they create a similar effect. The dominance of masculinity reflect the patriarchal society where men have greater power and authority. This is reflected through men

with low-angled shots while a female in thrillers doesn’t necessarily have the same power given.

EvaluationQ1) In what ways does does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

‘Baskerville’ and ‘Kefa’ are the two fonts I used for inserting text for our credits.The quote is from James Rollins’ The Judas Strain

novel, I loved how simplistic the quote was and how it foreshadows the rest of our opening. It’s implied that

the door connects the two characters together, but the cliff hanger leaves it open for interpretation. I think the quote highlights this point; how the door is incredibly

symbolic and important in connecting the two characters to the audience.

Transitions of text appearing for our production information fades from a black background into the moving image;

overlapping the information, visually leading the audience into the first scene of the film.

The placement of the text was also inspired by being part of the scene and not pulling distraction completely away from what’s happening on screen.

Colour Correction: I did quite a bit of colour correction, only changing small things, in order to make it visually ore appealing. Altering the colour tint; for the female scenes adding blue and the male

scenes sharpening the image and having some red tints created a light change which helped to get across the mood we wanted to reflect.

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