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

Evaluation

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

 Thriller films are meant to excite the audience through tension and suspense. The higher the anticipation of the audience, the more enjoyment they should feel upon reaching a conclusion, although they should go through certain frightful and jumpy moments that are very common compared to the typical conventions of the thriller genre. The thriller theme is usually, based on typical conventions, quite dark, abstract and involves deadly plots or situations which are used to thrill the audience and have them ‘on the edge of their seat’ figuratively speaking.

 

Thriller films are very similar to horror films in the way that shot types, fast editing, lighting are all used to create tension and anxiety building up to the climax of the film. The main difference between a horror and a thriller film though is that the horror films are generally used to induce fear and create a terrifying atmosphere involving more gory scenes and horrific sights, whereas the thriller films excite because of the suspense and intense storylines.



Taking Of Pelham 123

There are many subgenres of thriller films including; psychological, action, mystery, political and paranoia thrillers. The Thriller genre tends to overlap with the action and horror genres as they can be used together to create suspense as well as an exciting/scary storyline like in the film Taking of Pelham 123, where dark and vague scenes are used to present the thriller side and fast-paced chases and intense gun-fights portray the action genre within the film.

We chose to use action as our subgenre of thriller as we decided it would be the easiest to do in our local area with the resources at our disposal. The audience expects that this genre will be full of action-packed scenes where there are constant breath-taking scenes including chases, fighting, death and conventionally some scenes that involve a means of transport being used in a dangerous way. For instance, in the film Unstoppable, where trains are shown in a negative manner, portrayed as dangerous as the train becomes a runaway and wreaks havoc throughout the city. This had an influence on the making of our thriller film, and although trains being shown as dangerous are not particularly that conventional within the thriller genre, we decided that trains were a valid transport type that we could showcase as dangerous instead of the typical idea of using cars as the conventional dangerous type of transport.

 Thriller films use very unique techniques that set the scene within the first two minutes. Setting the scene for a film of the thriller genre can be done through:

·         Sound – diegetic and non-diegetic sound will create suspense and add to the tense atmosphere.

·         Editing – Shots from a moving camera and fast moving transition effects will help to create a pacey atmosphere for the film and give a dramatic feel to it.

·         Shots – Close-ups that prevent the audience from being able to see too much, making the audience feel like they want to know what is going on elsewhere as well as making them feel uncomfortable as the person is seen to be ‘invading personal space’ by being so close.

·         Mise en scene effects like props, lighting, costumes and setting.

For example, in The Sixth Sense, the first shot that we see of the mother and her child is looking in through the window at an angle so you can see the boy and his mother. The focus of the shot is on the boy’s face, he looks scared and really traumatised whereas the mother looks serious and concentrated, showing a clear distinction between the boy’s emotions and the mother’s. The boy informs his mother and the audience that a woman has died in a car accident. At this point, digetic sound can be heard, allowing the bustling streets outside to be clearly heard within the car and by the audience, adding suspense and showing that it is building up to an important event. The boy looks very vulnerable as he is slightly lower than the eye-level camera shot and the scene creates suspense  well through the use of speech, diegetic sound and clever high-angle and close-up camerawork. This is quite conventional of a thriller film as the intention is to make certain people look vulnerable and others dominant, as well as creating suspense through mysterious sound effects or dramatic emotions. We used this shot to show this dominance and the vulnerability of our victim as we thought this shot showed perfectly who is in charge and leaves the audience with no doubt as to whom the power figure is in our movie.

Location Conventions:

Our location is very conventional as the deserted train station is an ideal place for a thriller film to be set, due to the desolation and danger that an isolated train station holds as there is nobody around in case of the occurrence of a problem. For example, like in our production, if a lady is standing alone on a platform, it would be incredibly easy for someone to get away with knocking her out before she notices them and then getting her onto the tracks as there is nobody around to witness this happening or do anything about it. Some examples of conventional locations for thriller films are shown below.



Thriller locations usually follow the same sort of conventions. They are usually set in dark, dreary places, although many thriller have challenged these conventions by being set in the home, because this unsettles the audience as the home is seen as a safe place and if that security is gone, people become uncomfortable. Thrillers are, in many cases set in the forest at some point during the film. This is fairly typical because the tightly-packed trees and endless stretches of forest are used effectively to make the audience feel uncomfortable. This is because they feel like there is no escape due to the idea that you can go any way and it wouldn’t make any difference as it just goes on and on and the trees are effectively ‘closing in’ on the character causing the idea of an ‘invasion of personal space’ which unsettles the audience.

 

Narrative Conventions:

Gravestone and flowers (symbolises death)

Trains tracks (symbolises death)

 The typical conventions of a thriller film involve death, destruction and tension. Our production shows death in many ways; one of these is through the use of the graveyard and the flowers at the very beginning, symbolising that someone will, or has, died, meaning the audience want to watch on and find out who dies or has died, how they die/died and why it happened. Another symbol of death in our film is the train tracks.Usually in a typical thriller film, the setting gives an insight into how the victim will die, so our train tracks symbolise death in this way. One more symbol of death within our film is the balaclava that our killer wears. This is due to the fact that, conventionally, if an actor is wearing a balaclava or any type of mask in some cases, it associates them with doing something wrong or being an evil character, hiding their identity for some sort of bad purpose, involving death under typical circumstances.



Bank Robber masks in 'The Town'

Freddy and Jason's masks in 'Freddy Vs Jason'




Leatherface's mask in 'Texas Chainsaw Masacre'




Batman's mask in 'The Dark Knight Rises'

Some examples of a hidden identity are; The Dark Knight Rises, The Town, Texas Chainsaw Masacre and Freddy vs Jason.


Lighting Conventions:

'The Butterfly Effect'

The typical conventions of the lighting in a thriller film usually involve dark, dreary places at some point. Most open with dark scenes like ‘The Butterfly Effect’ that try to make the audience curious as to what is happening and why the actor is where they are. In our thriller, the lighting is not dark, challenging the typical conventions of a thriller. We chose to do this as a dark setting was hard to produce with the resources at our disposal as we do not have proper professional cameras so we did not want to film our production in dark areas as it may be hard to make out what is happening. This confuses the audience as the darkness usually symbolises the idea of death but the bright sunlight is not a typical convention of the opening scenes of a thriller film. The representation of death is still present though, because of the graveyard scene that opens our film, meaning that we did not need to play around with lighting and find a way to open our thriller production in a dark setting. The sun was really helpful in creating shadows in places that we needed them, which helped to create a tense atmosphere as the killer could be seen creeping up on our victim right at the start of the 2nd scene. The sun also played havoc with our filming as we had to try and stick to the 180 degree rule but that was difficult when you were trying to prevent the camera from catching the shadow of the tripod or anything else on film.

 

 

In this image, you can see the shadow of our killer, shown to be creeping up on our victim, building up the tension and showing the audience that something bad is soon to occur. This foreshadows the coming events, adding to the plot and assuring the audience that this is definitely the opening to a movie of the thriller genre.

Shot Conventions:

Extreme Close-up in the film 'Psycho'

Typical shots that you will see in a thriller film are always used as an effective way of showing the contrast between vulnerable characters and more dominant, powerful characters (usually the main protagonist). Low-angle shots and extreme close-ups are used in an effort to make the audience feel uncomfortable as it gives the impression of ‘closing in’ as well as the idea of the dominant character knowing more than the audience and representing the character’s power over the everyone else. 

 

These types of shots also make the audience unaware of most things that are happening in the film, as they are obstructed by the fact that a lot of shots are used to show different points of view and control the audience’s perception and what they are seeing. In our production, we used a very effective low-angle shot that shows the dominance that the killer has over his victim.

This low-angle shot is especially effective as it shows the unconscious victim tied up and the killer standing above her on the platform, particularly showing his power over her and leaving the audience with no doubt that he is an important character in the film.

Title

The title of our film, ‘Kate’s Revenge’, is not very conventional as it is a fairly unconventional title that doesn’t suit the usual mystery, horror or action sense that most thriller titles have (Sixth Sense, Psycho and Die Hard). It does though, foreshadow that something bad is going to happen to somebody because of something they have done wrong to somebody called Kate so some would say that there is a sense of mystery to the title of our production. As the opening shows, the girl dies which immediately causes the audience to think that she will come back as some sort of spirit in order to get revenge showing a slight psychological change to our thriller that, so far, is mainly based around the conventions of an action thriller. This immediately makes the audience on edge as they are unsure of how exactly this revenge will be taken, making our title quite an effective one as it lead to uncertainty and making the audience even more uncomfortable because they are unsure what subgenre this film belongs to yet and want to find out.