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

of real media products?

Our short film is based on a thriller/drama genre, if follows the specific conventions of both the genres.

One of the main aims of a thriller is to create suspense and excitement for the audience as well the narrative device that teases the audience by presenting a puzzle or a riddle to be solved, we manage to do that in the scene were the main character falls asleep in the car of the supposed taxi drive and then ends up waking up in his house, which makes the audience want to find out what happened to the character.

Most thrillers are usually set in a suburban or urban area and for that reason we decided to film in a busy city like London. However the significant event of a thriller is usually solved at the end but we decided to leave it as an open ending, this leaves the audience with a more excitement and suspense as to what happens to the relationship between the two characters.

The reason as to why we believe that our film is seen as a drama and not only a thriller is because the taxi driver actually feels very lonely and the only way he is capable of making friends is by doing what he does, this is an unexpected twist due to the fact that most of the audience believe that the main character was kidnapped by the driver but in the end he is harmless.

Throughout our film we used a variety of different camera shots, for example towards the end when the main character finds himself in a strangers house and he begins to wonder around the apartment, we did one single shot using hand held to make that scene more realistic and believable for the audience that way they are able to interact with the character and follow him through the corridors and bedrooms of the apartment.

Todorov was a Bulgarian structural linguist, his work was focused and interested in the way language is ordered to infer particular definitions and has greatly influenced the field of narrative theory.

Todorov's narrative structure consisted of five stages. The first stage is equilibrium this is the point where everything is seen as normal and calm we see this when the main character is walking in the park, however the significant event happens and he loses his phone and then ends up finding a taxi, later on he starts panicking because he realises that he is locked up in the car and ends up falling asleep, the significant event is when the stable environment is disrupted by some kind of force which then creates a stage of disequilibrium.

The audience will be able to recognise the disruption due to the fact that it is not normal that a taxi driver is able to drug its client and not worry about the consequences.

When the James wakes up in the bed of a stranger and begins to panic because he doesn’t recall what happened to him before he walk up, this part of the film is called the climax because it is seen that the only way to re-create equilibrium is through action directed against the disruption. Finally the new equilibrium is restored and a new state of equilibrium is introduced to the world of the narrative.

This new state of equilibrium can sometimes differ but be an improvement of the initial state of equilibrium. We see this towards the end of our film when the supposed taxi driver knocks on the door and tells James that breakfast is ready and he seems completely innocent, however the film end with once again an open ending where the audience don’t actually knows what happens to the main character. Todorov's theory links to our story because we have applied his theory to the structure of our story and plots.

In our film we did not apply Levi Strausses ideas about narrative theory due to the fact that he believed all stories operated to certain clear binary opposites. The importance of these ideas is the essentially a complicated world is reduced to a simple either/or structure where things are either right or wrong, good or bad, there is no in between.

This structure has ideological implications if for example you want to show that the hero was not wholly correct in what they did and the villains were not bad. We can apply Strausses theory to our story because the villain in our film assists the hero to get back on his feet. We didn’t believe that his theory would fit in with what we wanted to accomplish with our film, as it has many unexpected event that are neither bad or good.