Question 1

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

A thriller is a type of film that attempts to utilise excitement, suspense and surprise in order to attract an audience and captivate audiences. Typically, thrillers have various sub-genres including crime, horror, psychological and action.

 For our thriller sub-genre, we have used two separate sub-genres, mystery and psychological, which we feel was a perfect combination of genres because they both rely on fundamental aspects of a typical thriller movie. Psychological thriller often find themselves creating a sense of loneliness and anxiety for the viewer, as well as a series of questions that the reader can’t initially answer, creating tension and suspense. Tension and suspense are clearly displayed in our thriller, as the identities of both the child and the abductor are not revealed, nor the exact location or the motives behind the act. This forces the audience to make their own judgements initially, which cannot be confirmed as true or false until the film develops and more information is revealed.  In terms of loneliness and anxiety, throughout our thriller opening various close up shots of the girl are used in order to press the audience close in, metaphorically allowing them little time to escape from the drama or action at hand. Also, the killer is not shown at all until the end, and is only included in one brief shot, which serves the purpose of heightening suspense and tension. 

Such conventions are crucial for creating high quality mystery and psychological thriller movies that we feel are included and replicated in our own production. Examples of real psychological and mystery thrillers we emulated include Shutter Island and Se7en, which both include similar close up shots as well as tilted shots and long, establishing shots.

Editing wise, various effects can be added to individual shots, including blurring the background or foreground in order to either force the audience to focus on a specific object or person, perhaps to distract the audience from threats, or to highlight the threat to imply danger and fear. Shots can be partially distorted, blackened, faded or covered, all with the purpose of creating enigmas and adding tension. 

Camera speed in a typical thriller will change depending on the type of scene being displayed. In some scenes, slow paced panning shots or establishing shots can be used to lull the viewer into a state of calmness, whereas in scenes of heavy drama and action, a faster paced set of shots is more common, which momentarily confuse the viewer and replicate the hurried actions being displayed on screen. Examples of this in our thriller include the initial slower panning shots, which establish the setting and area, as well as denoting that the girl is not yet in immediate danger. However, as the opening begins to develop, shot time decreases, creating a sense of foreboding for the audience. Utilising over the shoulder and close up shots specifically to avoid revealing the identity and the face of the antagonist further shrouds the opening in mystery and creates enigma, which was inspired from the thriller Psycho, a film that doesn’t reveal the identity of the killer during attacking scenes through the use of close up shots.

Dual narratives is another form of editing technique clearly displayed in psychological and mystery thrillers, in which a story is told and displayed to the viewer from two separate perspectives, typically a protagonist and antagonist. Se7en’s opening features shots of the antagonist plotting and scheming, before immediately transferring over to the lead protagonists, displaying the beginning of the film from their own perspective. This technique allows the audience to clearly identify a narrative and to understand why certain events are unfolding and why they are happening. In our thriller, dual narrative is utilised as another means of conveying and developing conventions of real media products. The beginning depicts the antagonist, preparing for the attack, which leaves the audience clearly knowing someone is in danger, creating suspense. Following this we follow the opening from the perspective of the child, with the audience knowing this person is in danger because of the dual narrative in affect. Eventually, the two perspectives meet, merging together into one final shot, which crucially is also the peak of both the danger and the suspense in the opening.

Mise-en-scene conventions in a thriller typically include props such as blood, weapons and instruments of harm, which can all be carefully placed to depict a trail of damage or to foreshadow events to occur later in the film. Focusing specifically on individual objects denotes to the audience that they are relevant, so by replicating such a practice in the opening of a thriller like in Se7en, the audience quickly understands that the items in focus are planned to be used later on in the film. 

Our thriller replicates this in the very opening scene. A pan shot highlights various objects of potential danger on a desk in darkened lighting, all intentionally denoting danger and drama. We soon see a shot of the antagonist putting on gloves, which again is similar to Se7en’s focusing on the antagonist’s hands and the objects being moved and placed. For our actors, we used a larger, taller male to display the role of the antagonist, and a smaller, younger female child as the vulnerable and innocent lead character. Children are often used as victims in thrillers, often being associated with innocence and frailty. The costumes for our actors remained relatively simple and certainly not extravagant, so as to closely replicate the typical costume of a psychological thriller, which often sees protagonists wearing bland or dark clothing that can be perceived as normal or common by the audience, so as to clearly denote to the audience that the film is not unrealistic. The child actor wore a school uniform to further emphasise how young she is. School uniforms are possibly the most common form of clothing seen on young children, again displaying to the audience that our thriller is relatable, seeing as many viewers will have children of the same age wearing similar clothing. 

The antagonist wore typically dark clothing, which holds connotations and symbolism of fear and danger, with antagonist in many thrillers wearing darkened clothing.

Sound in psychological thrillers is important for establishing mood, and to convey to the audience what type of scene is taking place on screen, and how the audience should be feeling. Initially for our thriller rough cut, we included a song that we deemed inappropriate and unfitting later on, as it became distracting to the shots in the opening. After this, in our final cut we included an instrumental track, which made the focus much more on the shots and the events rather than the music. Typical to real thriller conventions, we wanted to replicate a sound opening to Se7en, which is effectively a compilation of various non-diegetic sounds used quickly to denote danger. To replicate this, we created a track using several voices from news presentations and phone calls describing missing children. We felt that this was relevant and appropriate to our thriller and the events occurring. These sounds crescendo towards the end, matching the editing and the shots on screen. We used exclusively non-diegetic sound in our thriller opening, which we feel isolates the viewer more so, and makes the voices in our compilation easier to understand. Setting determines to the audience where a film is being conducted a potentially in what time period. Psychological thrillers are typically set in less extravagant surroundings than other thrillers such as action thrillers, and are often set in areas that are familiar and easily accessible so that the audience can relate on a personal level. Our location is a wood, which supports the type of setting seen in other psychological thrillers such as Se7en, as it is a location frequently visited and there are many in the surrounding areas of most cities and towns. This means that the audience are likely to have a heightened sense of fear, since the crime scene likely matches somewhere they themselves have visited before. Another psychological thriller that displays a wooded opening scene is Silence of the Lambs, a film we also closely based our opening on. 

In the opening of Silence of the Lambs, it is not explained to the audience who the female is or their reason for being in the area, which an aspect we tried to replicate in our own thriller opening. This creation of enigma and sense of mystery also supports our want to make our thriller part of the mystery genre as well as psychological.
Four our typography, we conducted an online poll so as to determine our font of choice. Our selected font is jagged and abrasive in style, inferring to the audience that the following film and its actions may match the very same description. This font successfully matches our target audience bracket, and relates to typically chosen font types in many thriller openings, most notably Se7en.

Genre wise, our thriller is clearly displayed as mystery and psychological thriller, and we achieved this through intentionally varied editing and camera shots that shroud the identity of the antagonist throughout the opening. Initially, for our rough cut, this was not the case, and we spent a lot of time focusing on the antagonist and their face, meaning that the sense of enigma and confusion was mostly lost initially. Because of this we decided to alter how often we focused on the antagonist for the final cut, creating more tension, suspense and enigma. In our Vox Pops, we asked a group of people to view both the rough cut and the final finished cut of our production. It was clear that people found the final cut better than the original because it created more mystery and questions to answer as to the identity of the actual killer, meaning that we had sufficiently improved our overall production, much like how in real media productions, it will take various cuts and a number of edits and screenings in order for directors and producers to decide how to improve, and to receive feedback.