Mind Trap - Evaluation Question1

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

Genre: Psychological thriller

Movies used:

Donnie Darko

Memento

Memento

Mind Trap

Both Memento and Mind Trap use black and white filters to distinguish one thing from another. In Memento the black and white filter is used to distinguish memories from the present time where as, in Mind Trap, the filters are used to distinguish hallucinations from reality.

The use of the black and white filter makes the plot of the film (in both Memento and Mind Trap) easier to understand and follow and makes black and white parts, at least the in case of Mind Trap, seem more intimidating and sinister.

Donnie Darko

Mind Trap

Both Donnie Darko and Mind Trap have teenaged protagonists, though this fact is more obvious in Donnie Darko as the character is seen in school throughout the movie.

We used a teenaged protagonist in our film as we felt it would help the film appeal to our target audience (older teens) and so was done for the same reasons a teen protagonist was used in Donnie Darko.

Whereas Memento has an older protagonist as it is aimed at an older audience.

Memento Donnie Darko

Mind Trap

Memento, Donnie Darko and Mind Trap all have a character who becomes involved or tries to help with the protagonist’s problem. However in Donnie Darko and Memento the supporting characters become romantically involved with the protagonist and get involved to the point of injury or death. This didn’t occur in our short film as we didn’t have the time scale of the two feature films to develop that type of plot properly.

Memento Donnie Darko

Mind Trap

Whereas both Memento and Donnie Darko had a male protagonist our short film had a female one. In most movies, regardless of genre (unless the genre is romance), the protagonist is more often male that female. We chose a female a female protagonist to go against this convention and as we didn’t want to rely on too many external factors as it would increase the number of things that could go wrong.