In what ways does your media product use, develope or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The thriller genre consists of a lot of conventions:

Other conventions in thriller openings can be the shot types, these can change deping on narravties, however common shots used are establishing shots of the area, close and mid shots used to introduce character.



High angle shot of the victim to make them look inferior and weak (psycho)



Shot angles are alos used to make an character appear to be the innocent victim, this could be a point of view shot from a high angle looking down on the victim as it will make them look inferior and weak.

Editing is also used to create conventional themes as it can easily build tension by editing the shots to cut from one another quickly, so the pace varies to create peaks through the tension.  This same idea can be for cross cutting; this is effective in building tension between two on going narratives as it flicks between them. E.g. one narrative of a car chase happening at the same time as a risky deal is happening.



The victim is lit brighter than the dark shadow of the
 killer behind the certain on the left.



Common mise en scene used in thrillers:
 lighting- lighting is generally very dark for shots around the villains setting as this represents their personality and creates a dark atompshere. On the other hand lighting can be used very brightly to light a victim to show their pure and innocent character an example of these lighting techniques is in the thriller Psycho as the killers face is hidden by lighting where as the victim is well lit surrounded by light colours.



Sinister characters face shadowed out to make them
 mysterious and keep their identity hidden. it alos
add suspsense the the situation as the shadow could move
at any moment to reveal who they are.



 Shadows are another strong feature of a thriller as they too were used in the Psycho thriller. They are used to hide a characters identity yet show their movements and create a great amount of tension. In our thriller we tried to keep to the lighting conventions by keeping all the shots very dark as all the shots were of the sinister character. We also used candles for lighting as we hoped the flickering light would make it look more supernatural and mysterious.

Screen shot from our thriller to hide the identity. Use of costume
of black cloak for mysterious effect.

Costume- costume is used in thrillers is often used to hide identity of a villain. This usually consists of hooded items and masks to hide a face and keep them mysterious. Black is also used a lot to connotate their dark character. In our thriller we used a long black hooded cape to keep the identity of our character hidden until the end. It worked well as wearing black made it look mysterious and the hood kept the face hidden.

The isolated location we used for our thriller, making the
character seem very suspicious and mysterious as they were
in this setting.

Setting- Settings of thrillers vary , they could be set in a dangerous and derelict place such as down alley ways or abandoned houses as they are so isolated the victim will seem more helpless. Alterivetly they could take place in what is a safe place for someone such as a home, this is often effective as it can build tension well as it is somewhere unexpected and is somewhere they thought was safe, making the viewer empaphise for the victim. Psycho exemplifies to this as the murder in the film occoured in the victims bathroom, It shows and unexpected situation in a realistic environment. This goes to show that you are not as safe as you think which may frighten an audience. Our thriller took place in a dark abandoned barn it was effective as it showed no signs of civilisation and made you question why is the person there and are they on their own.

Props- The props we used for our thriller were conventional in some ways such as the candles and matches as they created a supernatural atmosphere, the other props we used still fitted will with the thriller themes but were not as common. The dice represented the idea of chance and uncertainty and the contact lenses were used to shock the audience and make an impact as they  when what our tension build up to. Props used in other thrillers are things such as weapons which make be used for a murder or criminal act. Computers/photos for stalker themed thrillers. Alot of our props fitted with the religious themes:



We used all of these props for our thriller
Cloak: it was used to make them look mysterious and sinister , it may also represent a religous garment
Contact lens: These were our shock element, we used this to scare the auidence and be the climax of our tension.
Chalk: This was used as it we thought it would look more realistic,it also stoood out against the board we used and created a very effective scratching sound.
Matches: These made the charcter seem powereful as they were using fire in a way which perhapse 'summoned' some sort of supernatual being.
Dice: These where our element of change and uncertaiunty, they build suspense as you did not know what the numbers were going to be and what they would cause.
Snakes: the sankes were the main prop we used as they created our narrative. We used them as many people fear them and we wanted to play on the idea of phobias.



Here are the overall conventions of our thriller:

One film we took inspiration from was Seven as its opening sequence was quite fast paced and confusing at first yet still made you want to know who the persopn was why they were writing and making all these things, and who they were. It made you want to know more as the overall use of the shots was done to only show you sections of what was happenign so you had to guess what was going to happen. We really liked the idea of dark quick shots compiled together to create an opening. We tried to use similar transitions of fades to dark colours and quick straight cuts. As well as trasitions we tried to use the same pace and create similar  dark lighting for each shot as we thought seven's openign was very effective. We also tried to form a narrative from the quick clips as did the thriller opening titles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY

The main convention we avoided was having a male protagonist as we thought it would be interesting to have a female as it shows a change in power and makes the behaviours seem unusual and make you want to know more. it was alos what we found out from research that our audience wanted to see a new narrative with a female villain.