Evaluation - Question 1

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

The brief given was to create a 2 minute opening thriller sequence. We had to work in groups and I worked in a group with Layla Boudaboussa and Leo Ly.

There are many different conventions of a thriller film. Firstly, a female victim. Thriller films usually have female victims as they are easier to present as weak and innocent characters. Halloween is one thriller that uses this convention. The girl is in her bedroom looking in the mirror when her younger brother comes into the room and stabs her to death. This shows that she weak as she did not fight back to save herself. Therefore, the audience can build up a relationship with the victim as as they feel sorry for her. Also, the victim wouldn't have expected to be killed by her younger brother who she most likely would have loved. This helps the audience relate to the victim because they wouldn't expect a loved one to kill them either. This makes a female victim conventional to the thriller genre because it builds up suspense keeping the audience engaged as they want to know what is going to happen next.

A second thriller convention is a hidden identity. This is conventional to the thriller genre because it creates an enigma for the audience. This convention is used in Saw 2 as the victims are being told to do different things through a voice but don't know who it really is. This builds up suspense for both the victims and the audience as neither of them know who it is. This helps the audience relate to the victims because they are both wondering who the antagonist is. As a result, this enigma keeps the audience engaged within the rest of the film as they want to know what is going to happen next especially to the victims. This makes a hidden identity conventional to the thriller genre because it creates an enigma building up tension for the audience.

Another convention of the thriller genre is a knife. This is usually used by the antagonist to stab and kill his victims. This convention is used in Scream 2 when the antagonist runs towards the girl then the knife goes straight through the door. This tells the audience that the antagonist doesn't care about the pain he is about to cause with the knife. It also shows that he isn't worried about the consequences and just wants to kill his victim. By using a knife, it shows that it is an easy weapon for the antagonist to get hold of. It is conventional to the thriller genre because it creates tension as it foreshadows that someone is going to get stabbed and die.

Also, low key lighting is a convention to the thriller genre as it builds up suspense. It also forms silhouettes and shadows creating enigmas as the audience don't know who it is. Low key lighting is used at the start of Woman in Black when the three girls walk towards the window. This scene shows the girls with shadows following behind them. This tells the audience that, as they are in an attic, this is the reason as to why low key lighting is created. By using low key lighting in this scene, it makes the scene scarier as it builds up suspense. This is also because the audience can see the young girls' shadows. Therefore, this helps the audience build up a relationship with the three victims as they feel sorry for them. Finally, this also foreshadows that something bad is going to happen which keeps the audience engaged as they want to know what's going to happen next.

Another thriller convention is suspense as it keeps the audience engaged and wanting to know what is going to happen next. This convention is used in Taken 2 when the female victim is running away from the antagonist. This builds up suspense as music plays in the background and you can hear the girl heavy breathing. By creating suspense, it keeps the audience engaged within the rest of the thriller film so they want to find out what is going to happen next.

A final convention of the thriller genre is non-diegetic sound. One type of non-diegetic sound is music which creates tension. This keeps the audience engaged in the rest of the thriller film. This convention is used in Jaws when the shark is going towards the victim. This makes the audience feel sorry for the victim as they know the shark is going to eat her and therefore kill her. If the music wasn't in the background then the audience would find it hard to realise what was going to happen to the girl until it happened. As a result, this makes the suspenseful music important as it helps progress the narrative and also helps the audience understand what is happening. In Jaws, it builds up suspense and helps the audience stay engaged within the rest of the thriller film as they want to know what else the shark is going to do.

In  our thriller film, there are 3 main conventions that we use. These are: female victim, a knife and an enigma.

We decided to use the female victim because we thought it would be easier to show the weakness, vulnerability and innocence of a victim in danger. I felt that we were able to show this as she was only young and looked very scared. By doing this, it meant that the audience could build a relationship as they felt scared for her as they know what the antagonist is going to do. Also, as the target audience are of a similar age to the victim, they are able to relate to her building the relationship up further.

We chose to use the knife as the antagonists weapon of choice because we knew that most other thriller films use a knife. This makes it the most popular weapon choice chosen by antagonists. I thought that it was good to use a knife because it created tension and we were able to show the blood on the knife afterwards. By using a knife, it helps the audience relate to the film as the weapon is a household item which they are used to seeing. Therefore, the audience can build up a relationship with the antagonist as they know it would be easy to take anywhere with them.

We created an enigma as the audience didn't know whether the antagonist was a male or female. We were able to make the audience think that the antagonist was female by laying make up out on the dressing table. However, they may have thought it was a male as the antagonist had a male physique. To confuse the audience even more, we chose to use a clown mask to hide the antagonists face and therefore hide his identity. This would have confused the audience a lot more and made them wonder if the antagonist was male or female. I thought this enigma was good because it keeps the audience engaged and wanting to find out who the antagonist really is. It also creates a fear of the unknown for the audience as they don't know what he wants or what he is going to do next.

We decided to use low key lighting as we knew it would build up suspense for the audience because both the victim and the audience don't know exactly what's in the room and what's happening. By using low key lighting, it meant that the room would be really dark making the victim more nervous so therefore means the audience worry as well. As a result the audience would stay engaged to find out what was going to happen next. This also allows the audience build up a relationship with the victim because they are scared for her.

We used non-diegetic sound in our thriller throughout through the use of suspenseful music. However, it would have had the most effect on the victim when she was walking through the alley and gets grabbed by the antagonist. This is because it becomes louder creating more suspense. Therefore, this makes the audience stay engaged within the thriller as they want to know what's going to happen to the victim. It also helps the audience build up a relationship with the victim because they know that she is going to get hurt so begin to feel sorry for her.

Finally, we also used suspense in our thriller film many times to keep the audience engaged. For example, we used it by having lots of pictures of the female victim lined up against the fence down the alley way. This confused the audience as they didn't know what was happening so built up suspense as they wanted to know. Therefore, they would want to watch the rest of the thriller to find out what was going to happen to the female victim.