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

The genre of our media project is a thriller. The opening of the film starts with a black screen with the digetic sound of sirens in the background. Next we hear an unknown digetic voice quoting a page from the bible. Although we don’t see where the sound is coming from it is still classed as digetic. This challenges forms of and conventions of a real thriller because the audience is in suspense as they do not know what is going on and the shot causes distortion due to not knowing anything. This builds an eerie atmosphere and creates tension.
During the opening we used black and white shots to signify changes from the past to the present. Black and white conventions have been used in the thriller genre many a time. We took our influence for the black and white flashbacks from the 1940’s thriller “Double Indemnity” and the neo noir/ thriller “Sin City” made in 2005. The black and white shots show us that they are distant memories and show that it is not happening in the moment.

The use of red rope in the 360 degree pan throughout our opening signifies blood and death, suggesting that the victim is trapped and death is inevitable. WE took this convention of red objects from “Sin City” where blood is the main focus and colours are enhanced. This is what we aimed to do in our opening because it would create impact.

The lighting during the 360 degree pan is all artificial as we used hi-key lighting. This gave an impression of an interrogation room used in a police headquarters focusing on the victim. Although we used hi-key lighting during the pan scene, we edited it and reduced the contrast to show a more sinister looking place. This made the atmosphere look darker and created a more eerie feel.

The setting of our opening was set in two locations; a metal workshop and Tom’s house. We chose the metal workshop because it looked abandoned and fitted our ideas of what our opening was going to look like. We went for an abandoned looking place because this is a typical convention of a thriller and has been seen in other thrillers and horrors such as the “Saw” franchise where people are likely to be kidnapped and isolated in an abandoned room where they are likely to suffer.

The titles are seen throughout the whole of our opening. We spread them out because we researched different film titles in different films of the thriller genre and the typical layout of titles were spread out throughout the whole of the opening. This made our titles look more realistic and professional. We used a red font for our titles because this again signifies blood and death.

The use of transitions between the 360 degree pan and the flashbacks show a change in time. From the flashbacks back to the 360 degree pan we used sharp cuts to make the opening look as distorted as possible. These types of shots are normally seen in films like “Saw” and short, fast paced shots are seen in nearly all thriller genres so we incorporated this convention into out product.