evaluation question 1

In what way does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In my thriller intro it holds the main thriller sub-genre as psychological, however we can also see parts of action/crime, as there are certain violent scenes. The closest thriller film to which I could possibly compare this to is se7en, as both are similar in many was such as the book which has information of murders, however in my thriller intro it actually has acting of the owner of the book, whereas se7en only uses props.

In addition my media film challenges the conventions of a real product in many ways. One of the most important factors is the use of credits, I used a mixture of credits on a black screen and some over certain scenes. The use of credits on a black screen was to help build up suspense and tension because its a key factor of thriller films and a common convention, as well to help scene changed in the intro, and example of a thriller which used this is se7en.

Moreover in my thriller there is often dark, low key lighting used in tense scenes, I found this important as it kept the audience interested in whats happening; this is rather common and is used in many thrillers such as Shutter island.

One of the main points of our filming challenging the characteristics of the thriller is that we wanted it to be believable to a certain extent, and the fact that we did not have any adult actors meant we did not use any digetic sounds as the voices will be unrealistic, as well as the sound being to plain. Therefore I decided to make a music soundtrack to play over all the scenes. This was a non-digetic sound but added to the mystery of the film, which is often a common convention of thrillers.

Then common ways in which we used characteristics of  real thriller films include the use of dark lighting, trying to keep the protagonist identity a secret, the protagonist has an aim, we often saw flash-backs/nightmares, and sometimes quick shot changes, which all help to build up suspension.

Overall if you had to compare my thriller intro to another, I would say its very similar to se7en, as it was the main inspiration to my thriller, and I tried to imitate many parts to it, such as the evil books, creepy body parts. However it challenged me to show more than just the build up of tension trough props, but also through acting and character interaction.

Finally I found that using the blog as another media product did actually really help me to produce my film as it lead me onto some great ideas, and would help to show how the final product came together to develop. I believe that they work very well together as the blogs can give updates on how well the film is coming together, and look at certain aspects. I believe that as there is such a large variety of blogs on the internet it can be similar to many already on the web which give updates on how things are coming along, such as someones daily routine even.

Here is a video which looks at the similarities between my film intro and se7en.