Harry Saunders

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Our product uses themes like mystery which is seen in man real media products associated with the thriller genre, like films including ‘Se7en’ and ‘Zodiac’. This is conventional as it is a theme that is commonly used in real thriller products. We used thriller in scenes like when Mitch found out about the letter when you can clearly see his face is shocked and

the soundtrack drops. This creates a strong amount of tension which we are using from real thriller media

products. This worked well in our product because it created an atmosphere of mystery, leaving our audience confused, which highlighted the thriller genre heavily.

We also used storylines that real media products would have used. For example, we used a similar narrative to the film ‘Memento’

where the narrative is to figure out an uncertain mystery. This is also a thriller film like ours. This is also known as the Enigma

Code by Barthes, meaning how tension is built up and it leaves the audience guessing what’s next, like our narrative. This influenced us to use these ideas as we wanted our product to fit conventions

and display it’s genre efficiently. Our narrative was displayed when Mitch opens the letter and the audience is uncertain of what

it means and we are trying to figure out a mystery of what the letter means along with Mitch. This creates a strong connotation

of real thriller media products as it is a typical narration of thriller films. Our audience feedback said it was original showing that it

was new to the audience, meaning they were unaware of what was going to happen, showing that we worked well with a mysterious

narrative.

The titles we used were also very similar to real media products. They were featured in a style that were very typical of a media product like ours to have. For example, the font we used was

typical as it is used in a lot of real media products and the way it was presented also matched many other real media products. The

titles displayed names and their assigned roles, which is very conventional of other real media products. This creates a high

amount of realism and professionalism to the product we made. This can be reflected in our audience feedback when they said it did look like an opening sequence because of the titles showing that it was the start of a product. This shows that our titles were heavily effective as they represented the opening of the film and

made the audience aware, alike a typical film.

We also used conventions from real media products from our genre to create feeling and emotion to be displayed

through the audience, a lot like other films like ‘Fight Club’. For example, we used a typical convention of the thriller

genre from real media products, being the feeling of uncertainty. For example, this can be displayed via the

audience when Mitch is decoding his letter, the audience will not know what he is doing and are left confused and

uncertain. This adds to the professionalism of our product as it follows the conventional feelings of real media

products in our genre. Our audience feedback said that they could tell that he didn’t want to see the letter but they

didn’t say they knew what it was about, so this evidently hosted uncertainty and seemed to have worked the

intended effect.

We challenged real media products in our genre by the characters. For example, we used a work mate as the person the lead role shares a house with. This is not

typically seen in real media products in our genre, for example in ‘The Box’ it is a married couple, a lot like most real media products. Challenging this is strong because it creates difference like Steve Neale’s theory suggests all

movies should feature. In our audience feedback this was picked up upon when they identified that it wasn’t a man

and wife but two workmates. However, there was no comment on how this is different to typical thriller

products. This could mean that this wasn’t as effective as planned and if we were to re-do the piece we would

emphasise that it isn’t stereotypical through dialogue.

Overall, I think that we worked well in creating a thriller opening sequence as we used many conventional forms and

even challenged it to an extent, meaning it will be interesting to the audience. Even in our audience feedback, we were told that they thought it was very original and they

could spot the themes we tried to input, so the audience was clearly affected by this in a positive way. Also when we asked what genre they thought it was, they told us thriller,

showing that our themes and ideas we added had efficiently worked to show our genre, so it worked well in my opinion.