In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE

CONVENTIONS OFREAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

INTRODUCTION

Through making our thriller opening the group and I have learnt

many of the conventions that thriller genre use and from this we

have been able to put these conventions into our final product. For

example, one of the ways in which we identified these conventions

is through analysing 3 different thriller openings. By doing this we

were able to find what the different thrillers had in common and

what they did differently. This gave us an insight into some of the

typical thriller conventions. We also looked into different sub-

genres of thrillers such as Spy thrillers (James Bond) and Political

thrillers (Argo) and by doing this we were also able to see many

variety’s of conventions used in thrillers. One of the final ways in

which we learnt about different thriller conventions is through

researching different thriller directors such as Alfred Hitchcock

and how these different directors went about creating their

thrillers and what they did differently.

SOUNDThrough research and my own knowledge I have realised how

important sound is in thrillers and how especially important it is

in horror/thrillers like our opening is based on and because of this

our group knew we had to decide on a perfect sound track for our

opening. This is because sound is a very effective way of building

tension and atmosphere which is key when it comes to horror

themed films. A perfect example of this is the soundtrack for the

movie Sinister (2012). https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiUmGy3ZzbI

The main soundtrack we used for our thriller was found through a

website called www.Freesound.org and shares similarities with

the soundtrack for Sinister in the hopes it would have the same

atmospheric and tension building effects. Towards the end of the

opening we also added sound effects such as a heart beating and

it slowly getting faster and faster. This is used quite frequently in

thriller films to reflects the emotions of some of the characters

and also to build up atmosphere up until the climax at the end of

the opening just like we used it for in our opening.

LIGHTING

Lighting is another key feature that is very important in thrillers.

Lighting is very useful for creating atmosphere in those tense moments

especially if the scene is dark as it make the film more tense with the

fear that something could jump out at any moment and you would never

see it coming. Low level lighting is very often used in thrillers/horrors to

make the viewer feel more vulnerable and threatened. In our film we

had the lights in the house go out as we felt this would be able to build

on the mysterious tone of the film and add more of a creepy atmosphere.

This also made our characters feel more vulnerable.

A very common shot used in horror films is when lighting is just bright

enough to make out a figure of a character but not any features to

identify them which can make this look very mysterious and can also

trick the viewer as they are unable to tell if the figure is a friend or foe.

An example of this shot being used is in the movie Paranormal activity 4

(see picture on the top right). We used this shot in our thriller when the

intruder in the house is first shown giving this character a mysterious

identity and leaving the viewer wondering who he actually is.

EDITINGWe decided to edit our opening in a

way that made it feel very fast paced

as most thrillers are very fast paced

so that it keeps the suspense at a high

level and is keeping the audience

entertained. Also the font we used for

the opening titles was called

‘ANARCHY’ and the design of the

fonts makes it look as if it has been

written in blood which fits perfectly

with the genre of our opening. We

also used a fade in and out for the

font which reflects the mystery of our

opening.

MISE EN SCENE

The location for our house was perfect for thriller and was available for us straight

away as it was the house of a friends. This house was perfect as it was located in a

very isolated area adding to the creepy atmosphere and making it feel like the

characters were all alone. Also located around this house was an abandoned fishing

hut, a lone bridge and a small woods which added to this atmosphere. The overall feel

from this area was very dark and mysterious which was perfect for our thriller.

Inspiration for choosing this location came from a film called ‘Cabin In the woods’

which had a very similar isolated setting. For the costumes of our 3 main

characters ,which are teenager males, we used very stereotypical clothing for

teenagers. We did this to show that these characters were just your average teenage

students and that nothing was unusual about them. For the murder we used very dark

clothing and a large hoodie to cover the characters face which was used to reflects this

characters dark nature. We purposely had our killer masked with no facial features to

be seen in the hope of creating a very mysterious and supernatural killer. This is used

a lot in horror movies for example the character Jason from the movie ‘Friday the 13th’

whose face is never shown.