Question 1In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?

Understanding of thriller genre and research we did.

These are some screen-grabs from my blog showing some of the research I did into thriller conventions, and thriller films. Firstly I looked into Tzvetan Todorov’s Narrative Theory and linked it to our thriller by showing the difference between the usual structure of a thriller film and ours.I also looked in detail at the conventions of a thriller film and what types of things you can expect to see in a typical thriller film. And then I looked into a thriller film (‘Catch me if you can’). I analysed it and showed how it can be located within the Thriller genre.

What impact did research have on our ideas and final film?After doing research into the conventions of a thriller film it impacted some of the decisions we had while making our thriller opening.The conventions of a thriller presentation I did gave us the idea to add aspects such as quick cuts, low key lighting and montages most of which were in the title sequence at the end of our opening. We also had tension music, especially at the climax when she found the mysterious document, and we used sound effects such as gun shots. We used these to create a dramatic effect and to foreshadow what’s going to happen in the film. The textual analysis of ‘Catch me if you can’ gave me the idea to make our film a less conventional thriller film for example a horror so instead we made a crime/war thriller.

How does our work adhere to conventions?These screen grabs show some of the conventions of a thriller that we adhered to.Firstly for our logo we used low-key lighting and fog to emphasise that it is going to be a thriller film and not a comedy for example, otherwise we might have made it more colourful.Throughout the opening we used more low-key lighting shown in the second screen grab of when the girl is walking down the street. We shot this when it was darker to represent the mood we were trying to convey. The girl was angry and sad, so a sunny atmosphere wouldn’t have portrayed the mood correctly.Also in the main opening we used a slow-motion shot (shown in the third screen grab) along with some tension-building music. And lastly in the title sequence we used some black and white quick cut shots in a few different montages (shown in forth screen grab). The one in the picture shows a war graveyard, which shows that the film will be about war, and a crow which represents death (another convention of a thriller film).

Have we been unconventional?

Although our film has many aspects that conform to stereotypical thriller conventions it also has aspects that are unconventional. For example we show different family relationships that you might find in any type of film genre, with a stereotypical grandma and dad which might suggest that it isn’t a thriller. However, the grandma turns out to be not so stereotypical when the girl finds the document suggesting she helped her ‘not-so war hero’ husband. Another thing that might be unconventional in our thriller is the high key lighting we use showing the sky. In this clip we also used diegetic sound of birds outside. This isn’t conventional because birds singing usually represents happiness. However after this clip I used a similar image but instead of birds singing I used tension-building music to change the mood back to match thriller conventions.

Narrative theory usedI used Tzvetan Todorov’s Narrative Theory to research the structure of a thriller. As the theory sates it should start with an equilibrium, then there should be a disruption is this equilibrium that leads to the climax and it usually ends with the equilibrium being restored. However because we only made the opening to our thriller this theory’s structure isn’t the same, instead it starts with a disruption caused by an argument between the girl and her father, then there is an equilibrium when she visits her grandma’s house and it seems to be a happy family, but it ends with a climax when the girl finds the document showing her granddad as a murderer which shows the mystery of the thriller we tried to convey.But I think that if we were to carry on to make the whole film it would reflect the structure of Todorov’s theory more as the disruption and the climax in the opening sequence will look like the equilibrium compared to the war and death that would be shown in the main film which would be the real climax.