1. Task 1<br />“In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?”<br />255651030797523495320040The Title <br />As you can see here the title of our film is much the same format as one of the top 10 thrillers of all time (According to the international movie database) in that it is simply one striking word that doesn’t actually give much away about the film. In this sense our media production uses the conventions of real media products to its advantage and draws on them directly for inspiration, it does not challenge or develop upon them in any way. I think these titles work very well in suggesting themes and continuous ideas present in the films rather than key characters or storyline elements and this adds to the overall appeal of thriller films. I am very happy with our title and think that it fits the narrative and genre of our opening sequence (and if we had time to film the whole picture the entire production) very well.<br />2628265198120The Setting/Location<br />254062865<br />Another very famous thriller film is shown here “The Dark Knight” – one of my favourite Thriller films of all time. It uses the backdrop of “Gotham City” very effectively throughout to create drama and suspense. It is also very important to the narrative and iconography of the film to be a comic-book-thriller. We used the backdrop of London frequently in our opening sequence – more specifically the houses of parliament and the London eye. This is developing the conventions or thrillers to use cityscapes that people can relate to and recognise into using world renowned landmarks that are extremely important and visually quite daunting places. In this sense our use of the dramatically light houses of parliament adds to the establishment of genre as well. <br />Costumes<br />262953511430057150<br />There is a long established convention in Thriller films of using people in normal, everyday attire but who posses extra, abnormal characteristics. This is shown in the screenshot of “Fight Club” shown to the left. It also shows very provocatively dressed characters in an almost seductive manner. We have continued this convention in our film by using costumes that accentuate the characters figures such as Cleo’s dress shown above. In our film specifically this also helps establish narrative as Cleo is portrayed to be the man-eating, two timer involved in various acts of misconduct. Also, Chloe’s character is dressed in black which represents death and mourning which also reflects the narrative and helps to tell the story. I am pleased with the costume in the film and think it does add to the impact. <br />21590320040Editing<br />11454876393The convention of a thriller film is to use very high end and visually stunning editing techniques that will wow and amaze the audience with their visual impact and big budgeted nature. However we did not have the time, skills and most of all money to invest in such editing and decided to go for a much more subdued and sedate style of editing, contrasting with the convention (depicted in the screenshot of “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” above). As our film was based around love, passion, romance, revenge and relationships the most visually noticeable piece of editing we did was fade a love letter scrolling upwards over the top of the scene in which Chloe is tearing up the very same love letter. This makes it a lot more obvious to the audience of what is going on as well as more professional looking. Overall I am pleased that we challenged the convention and didn’t attempt to conduct fancy editing techniques as these would have been very hard to achieve and if failed – which they probably would have – would have ruined the film. <br />249174029718018415297180Title Font Style<br />We chose to continue the convention of using very understated and easily read titles on our opening sequence (as has been done in Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs”) in order to not detract from the narrative or genre of the film. We used very limited colour on them, making them just white and using a very thin font rather than a bold one so that they wouldnt stand out too far and distract the audience but still being visible and noticeable to them. This also allowed us to spend more time on editing, filming and evaluating our project, which I think was a wise decision. <br />307530531940521590322580Setting up the Story<br />The enigma code is when you don’t reveal all about the story in the opening sequence, keeping lots of it secret to the audience and creating more questions than answers so that they want to watch on and find the answers to their questions. This is done very well in “The Matrix” shown above and we wanted to use this but develop it into a romance thriller genre to suite our narrative. I think we achieved this quite well with questions such as “who is the couple in the frame? Why have they split up? Why are they different to the couple on the bed?” etc. Also in the shot previous, the heads had been cut out of the frame to add to the confusion and create more suspense. <br />2658110326390Genre<br />234953175 <br />One of the most famous Thriller genre films of all time is “The Silence of the Lambs” from 1991. It uses a variety of high and low key lighting to create mystery as well as relate to everyday situations making it even more freaky and disturbing. I tried to create the same effect when establishing genre in our film by using normal lighting, but at night so that it is naturally low key and doesn’t look fake or contrived. I think this works well to create an eerie almost worrying realistic mood and establish the genre very well. Again in this way it uses the conventions of thrillers to its advantage and develops upon them to create an effective piece of footage. <br />133350401955Characters<br />Our film contrasts with the conventions of most Thriller films in the way it portrays characters however. For example in “A Clockwork Orange” by Stanley Kubrick the main protagonists are first seen as strong might powerful men with long shadows bigger than they themselves showing maybe their reputation precedes them or that they are extremely powerful beyond their physical might. This is achieved through backlighting from below, however in our film we chose to portray the opposite, making the protagonist – Chloe – seem small and weak by lighting her from above. This challenges the Thriller genre, but still achieves an important and enticing effect on the audience. In my opinion I think it doesn’t make too much difference whether the characters or extremely powerful or extremely weak, but for them to be interesting on first appearance they need to be at one end of the scale, and for Chloe to be so far at one end much as the characters in A Clockwork Orange are at the other is just as effective.<br />2607310264795-71120264795Special Effects<br />Special effects are another element of which we chose to contrast with the conventions. For example even in the 1959 Thriller “North By Northwest” by Alfred Hitchcock he used a lot of special effects in the opening sequence (Produced by Saul Bass as researched previous) and I think they look very bad and date extremely quickly. I think for special effects to work well is extremely hard, especially in our narrative which is extremely normal and relates to everyday life in which little special effects are used. I think our decision was wise and helped create an effective opening sequence. <br />