Evaluation Task 1

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

of real media products?By James de Winton

Introduction• In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• The first media product that we developed/challenged conventions from was Salt. First off the film was a thriller and a good one too, so we knew and took inspiration from the film. The film also contains many conventions to it that can relate to our thriller, because the film gave us ideas for our thriller, without stealing the film entirely. We got other ideas from the last of us (video game) and the Bourne series (film).

Salt (Film)

Salt is a movie which follows lead character Evelyn Salt, a CIA on the run as fugitive after being accused as Russian spy, Salt must now try to prove here innocence whilst trying to remain out of CIA’s sight.

Syncorp (Our Thriller)Our thriller opens with a young women working in industrial kitchen. Two janitors appear late at night and with guns, she kills them both with their own weapons by attacking them individually after they separate and using the element of surprise. Her combat skill’s surpass both of the men who were sent to kill her.

Theme – SaltThe themes of salt include ; Action, close action fight scenes, disguises, incognito.

We challenged the themes of incognito and fight scenes in our thriller. We developed lots of the characteristics of the lead character from Salt with our thriller.

Plot conventionsBoth story's follow a lone female character with little help. Both characters being chased by a larger and more powerful force. In Salt, she is being chased by several men making her outnumbered.

In our thriller she is outnumbered not only by numbers but also by age, height and also weapons. She has to fight with her bare hands to survive and escape.

Both of these thrillers protagonist fights there way our of a situation using cunning and skill. Both characters start of with no weapons but finish with them proving they have succeeding by taking a mans gun.

Character conventions pt. 1 In Salt the protagonist is a women who is a CIA officer. She is competent in defending herself and fighting off enemies. She is a trained is combat and is a nightmare to deal with.

In our Thriller the protagonist is also a female who is also competent when it comes to defending herself against enemy's.

They both have skills, strength and power. Salt was the main reason for us to cast a female and portray her as a stronger character then the males, so we developed this idea and put it into our.

Character conventions pt. 2 In both thrillers the protagonist is a women. Salt gave us the inspiration to choose a female character in our thriller because it subverts from the stereotypical man.

Furthermore both characters have some similarities between the two. Firstly they both have black hair which in my opinion suggests skill, intelligence and cunning, for instance if you had a blonde hair girl that would be more of a school girl style. Furthermore both characters dress well, they both have their hair done, makeup and are dressed smart. Salt inspired us to do this because we wanted the opening of our thriller to have more of a slick style to it.

Character conventions pt. 3Furthermore both characters have a similar personality in the way they move, their looks and their facial expressions. If you see here in the picture they both have the same facial expression when they both wield a gun. The expression being that they both have serious looks.

We wanted our character to show the same professionalism and seriousness about her as Evelyn Salt did the the film Salt.

Camera (Salt)In Salt they have lots of fight scenes, in some of them they shoot it with a handheld and its one long continuous shot. Not only that but also they use different shots and different types for some fight scenes.

In our thriller we used two types of shots for each one of our fight scenes. In our first fight scene we used one long long continuous shot which was shot with a handheld. In the second shot we used a collection of different shots from different angles.

Salt gave us some inspiration to do a continuous one shot long fight scene shot with a handheld because we felt that Salt made it look good. We decided to work with these conventions.

Action (Salt)The action scenes in Salt have lots of hand to hand combat and don't have lots of gun shoot outs, even though there is a lot of gun use, a lot of the action is hand to hand based and ends with a gun being fired, we developed this idea as so.

In our thriller we didn’t just want lots of gun shots being fired around the place. We decided on having a fight scene between the two in each fight and then having the hitman for that fight being killed by his owed gun after being disarmed.

This is like Salt because in one of the fight scenes, Salt must go in incognito style, she then fight them hand to hand, takes their guns and kills them with it.

Plot Convention pt.1The men chasing down the protagonist in Salt are mostly men, they are all tracking down a female character. In our thriller there are two males tracking down. She is outnumbered, furthermore the gender chasing her is stereotypically considered to be a more dominant force. The pursuers are failing for a large majority of the film to catch Salt, which means the film subverts from the gender stereotype that men are more competent that women.

We liked this idea for our thriller because it was different, so we decided to make the pursuers/hit men in our thriller men, so that it would subvert from the audience.

Plot Convention pt.2The victims in Salt are almost all men. They all get overpowered by salt or someone and killed. In our thriller the victims are both men.

Furthermore you could argue that Salt and the lead in our thriller are also victims. Salt is a victim of being setup, therefore making her a victim to false intelligence. Our lead is a victim because she is working late doing nothing wrong and then suddenly gets attacked be two hitmen.

The last of Us (Video Game)The last of Us follows two main characters a man named Joel and a young girl named Ellie. The video game is set 20 years after a zombie like fungus/bacteria broke out and caused an international pandemic. The pair now have to travel across the USA to find the resistance.We took inspiration from this because Ellie is a young girl who fights against older men and often wins, subverting from the stereotype that men are better then women in combat. Not only the character but also the location, as you can see in this picture from the Last of Us, she is sneaking behind a counter in an industrial style kitchen to attack the older male.

Character ConventionsEllie in the last of us is a young girl however she has the mind of a independent strong women, as she fights alone or at the least with a bit of help. Also she fights against men who are a lot older then her young age.

We developed the idea that she is a young girl on her own into our thriller. Furthermore the characteristics of Ellie is very sneaky and incognito, so we developed this idea to put it into our thriller. Moreover we challenge the characters movement when behind counters, etc when trying to remain hidden.

The Bourne series

The Bourne series is a thriller movie series. It follows Jason Bourne a dangerous and skilled government agent who has sudden amnesia and cannot remember anything about his past. The series follows Bourne trying to find out more about his past and what he used to do whilst being tracked down by the unknown agency that he used to work for.

Character conventions

We decided to develop a few of Jason Bourne’s characteristics and personality into our thriller. For instance we developed the fact that he is a mysterious character like with our lead, as we don’t reveal much about herself and her background in it. Furthermore Jason Bourne's fighting skills we developed however we got lots of inspiration from Salt as well. Moreover Bourne’s dress’s in dark color to make him seem more mysterious, we liked the idea of this convention so we decided to develop it and put it in our thriller.

Conclusion

• Overall I feel that we developed various character conventions and ideas from these different media products and in different ways.

• Salt was definitely the main media product from which we took inspiration from, especially when it came to our thrillers protagonist and the fight scenes.