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

https://youtu.be/BwjJ4dd9zog

Script:

Locations & Narrative:
With our narrative we have conformed to conventions of the thriller genre, for example we have chosen to leave the opening on an enigma so that it is not clear why the protagonist was kidnaped or whether she is alive or dead.

For our settings we were influenced by the thriller shutter island which gave us the idea of using the typical beach scene for our opening sequence it gives a sense of distance and separation.

By showing the waves lapping over the camera and it then dipping under waves, our audience feel the same entrapment as what the victim would feel, it then makes the audience empathise with that character as oppose to the villain character.

Gender:
In our thriller opening we included three male characters and one female. Following Propp's character types, we stereotypically used a male villain. This is used in almost every thriller, examples are the James Bond films and the Dark Knight Trilogy that all contain a villain that is of the male sex. The Bane in Batman is seen as very muscular and powerful over the other characters due to his physical build which we have attempted to replicate by using an actor who is much bigger than our victim.

Another convention our opening scene met is the typical 'damsel in distress' type character, being the female victim. This links to the 2008 film Taken which also features a teenage girl as the 'Princess', relating to Propp's character types. She is very weak and is kidnapped within the first few minutes of the film and the character is vulnerable as there are only two teenage girls and no males.

Costume/ props:
Our antagonist character is seen wearing a dark hoodie, this is used to hide the characters identity and create an element of mystery. We chose him to wear dark colours which have negative connotations such as evil, hate and death. This is typical for the thriller genre for a villain character. Additionally by choosing this costume it helps him stay hidden in the shadows which was shown to be very effective especially in the house party scene as he blended in to the background. It is very common in thrillers for masks to be used and in general for the villain's identity to be kept hidden, an example of this is displayed in the beginning of The Dark Knight film.

Something which was significant for our characters costumes was that of the costume of the extras. One of the friends in the party scene is seen wearing a yellow hoodie-style jumper. We used him to portray future events of the sequence. The colour yellow connotates happiness, joy and energy (reflective of the protagonist) however this colour also represents caution and warning which we took as foreshadows her untimely demise later on in the thriller.

In most thrillers the female characters are seen as objects and are sexualised (Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory) however we tried to subvert from these conventions and present her has a normal teenage character, this was partly helped that our actor was basically representing herself for the thriller.

Colours:
In the production of our thriller we decided to effectively use colour for impact. The use of colour is representative of the main character's life. To begin with the scene at the party we saturated the bright colours in shot to make it vibrant and alive. This gave the idea of strobe lighting as well as making the actors stand out (in contrast) to the pitch black background in that scene. This scene with the bright colours is designed to represent the life of the victim which at this time is complete and radiant.

There is a variation of colour for the beach scene where we used black and white shots as inspired from the 1960’s thriller Psycho. By taking all the colour from the picture it makes the scene seem incomplete and vacant. The DE saturated shots are unconventional as typically they show events in the past, however, with our thriller it in fact represents the present (the morning after the party).

Sound:
Starting off with non-diegetic sound which is sound characters cannot hear in the diegesis we created a soundtrack. We used Garageband to compose what we believe is a typical thriller backing track. We based it on the Bank Heist music from The Dark Knight because it was a very eerie and added tension to the scene in certain areas. We also used other tension sound effects to add atmosphere to certain areas.

Diegetic sound is also important in our thriller due to it being significant sounds which the characters can hear. A good example of this is the noise of the sea which is paramount to the rest of the title sequence not only as it displays the setting but also relate to what ends up to the protagonist.

Secondly the sound changes from the main sound track and slows down to an eerie wind blowing noise combined with the noise from a violin, we used this again to signify the life of the character which fades as she is seen to die at the end of the clip before the credits.

Finally, the tension is at its highest point during the POV shot of the victim drowning amongst the waves because it shows her struggle since we cannot hear any background noise, simply the bubbling sound which was added in the editing stages. This particular part is powerful as the audience are unsure if she is dead or not. Furthermore, the music ends abruptly presenting the disturbance of the equilibrium and her possible death.

MANY THANKS FOR LISTENING!
Written, presented and editied by Russell Dewing
www.russelldewingmedia.blogspot.co.uk