Q1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

A thriller is one of the many Genres that are used in literature, TV and film. The thriller genre is typically associated with the building of suspense and tension (making the audience sit on the edge of their seats) and can let out feelings of excitement, anxiety, tension and uncertainty. Like others, the thriller genre has a tonne of sub genres including action, crime, disaster, Eco, forensic, legal,medical, mystery, political, psychological, religious, spy, supernatural and conspiracy.

For our thriller we have used three sub genres, psychological, mystery and horror. We decided to use these sub genres due to the results of our Vox pop video where we asked the public some questions about thrillers to help get ideas for our own. Most people said their favourite character in a thriller film is the villain, one person in particular said they enjoyed the psycho type of characters. We took this into consideration when planning and this influenced our decision of using the psychological sub-genre. The psychological sub-genre typically has a narrative focusing on the mental state of a character (usually the villain).

When we asked the question 'what are the good aspects of a thriller?' in the vox pop video, one particular person said the soundtrack needed to be 'intense' and it needed a good narrative so you'd never want to stop watching.

The conventions of a thriller are lighting, editing, camera angles, sound, narrative and mise-en-scene. We incorporated a lot of these into our thriller opening so it was identifiable of what genre it is.
The thriller genre use a lot of different camera angles purposely to show power, emotion, setting and more. The typical camera shots used in a thriller are extreme close ups, close ups, over the shoulder, point of view and high angle. For examples of these camera shots, I have used screenshots from the thriller film ‘Don’t breathe’.

The first shot you typically see in a thriller film is the establishing shot, showing the location for the film. It is usually panning and is taken from a bird's eye view. In the film don’t breathe the first shot shows a street in which the whole film is set.

This is a low angle shot showing the antagonist holding a gun. This has been done below eye level, looking up towards the character. These types of shots are used in thrillers to show power by making a certain character look bigger and stronger. The colour red has also been used to reflect the character's intention of danger.

This is a point of view shot from the basement of the house, tracking the footsteps coming from the floor above. These shots are used in tillers to show the audience what the character is seeing, or in this case hearing, which is good for building suspense.

This shot is a close up of one of the main characters in Don’t breathe. These shots are typically used in thrillers to show emotion or reactions.

This is a bird's eye view shot of the two protagonists. These shots are effective in thriller films for showing who the victims are by looking down on them, making them look small and weak. This contrasts with the low angle shot that makes them look big and powerful, this makes them look small and weak.

This over the shoulder shot has been used to establish what is going on. The audience can clearly see the man on the left pointing a gun towards the other man on the right. These shots are used in thrillers to frame what is happening in the shot.

By looking at these camera shots in the film ‘don’t breathe’ it has helped us to understand which shots are effective and gave us inspiration for our own thriller to use.

This is an example of where we have used a typical thriller shot. To show what the character is doing and seeing, we have included a point of view shot. This informs the audience that the victim isn’t paying much attention to his surroundings and is completely oblivious to the killer.  

This is another example of how don’t breathe’s camera shots have inspired us in our own. We have used an over the shoulder shot however challenged ourselves by doing it the other way round, showing the front of the shoulder instead of the back. We did this to show a key part in our thriller where the victim gets knocked out by the killer. We needed this shot to clearly show this.

We have used the  convention of editing effectively, switching back and forth from different shots quickly with a white transition.  We did this to create a flashback scene; the  use of such a  quick and flashing scene allows us to  maintain the interest of the  audience.

This was a huge improvement from our first edit which  had  no fast pace clips or flashbacks.

First Edit

Final Edit

From these two examples it is easy to see, the final edit is more eye catching due to the flashes and fast pace. The first edit seems to drag on and become boring, being two clips placed together with no editing skills shown.

These scenes are from the thriller movie ‘Fight club’ are examples of flashbacks and where we got inspiration from. During these flashbacks they speed certain parts up and cut movements out allowing the audience to recognise it as a flashback and not in the present moment. It also gives the illusion of memory and not being able to remember certain bits and so in editing they have cut bits out. There are multiple small flashbacks in this scene which are shown just after the character has finished talking about that part in the past. The characters also don’t seem aware of these flashbacks and so suggests it is for the audience to remember and link back to previous scenes. There are no transitions used in between these clips to make it short and snappy, appearing quicker.

‘Fight club’ influenced us to use the flashbacks; another film we got inspiration from was The Walking Dead’s opening scene where it flashes between certain shots. We challenged ourselves by linking these two ideas together into our own opening scene.

Another idea we got from the walking dead was the typography, the simplistic look of it we liked; where the names are placed we liked also. They have positioned the focal object in the scene using the rule of thirds, leaving a blank space for the typography to be placed.

I have screen grabbed a clip from our opening scene and the walking dead’s one and compared these specific examples next to each other. You can see they are both similar in how the rule of thirds has been used. The picture frame has been moved slightly to the left so it is easy to read the typography.

Costume:

One way we stuck to the conventions of a typical thriller was using a gas mask as part of the killers costume to hide his identity. After doing some research I found no other killers in a thriller film wore a gas mask as a way to conceal their identity. The uniqueness and loss of identity the mask creates links to the sub genres of our thriller, mystery and psycho. This also allows the audience to easily identify which character is the villain.

To make the killer more psycho we had him wear all black, representing death and fear, reflecting intimidation towards the audience. This colour choice strips away any identity reflected in the style or colour the killer may usually wear.

Lighting:

For the lighting we have used natural daylight and only slightly dulled the colours when editing so shots from different days, where it had been sunnier, look like they were shot on the same day. This allowed us to keep  the continuity of the whole opening scene.

Props:

The two props we used were conventional for a thriller film in terms of weapons or ways of disposing the bodies. The first prop we used was the thick rope used for the hanging scene. In previous tried we had used a thinner rope instead of the one used for the final cut. We had to upgrade to a new rope due to the previous thin one looking unrealistic, like it would snap if weight was applied. The new one however looks stronger and helps with the realism.

The second prop we included was a shovel that the killer used to knock out the victim and bury him.

Sound:

For the sound we originally had the sound of leaves crunching for the first scene, however we decided to remove this as it didn’t sound right or match with the footsteps in our first clip. This made it look like the sound had just been added randomly without any thought into it and didn’t sound realistic. Therefore we changed it to the non copyrighted sound track we found, the whole way through overlapping a small amount of time with the ident clip.  

Composition:

We used the rule of thirds a lot in our opening scene to make the clips more visually appealing to the audience. Having a item slightly off centred makes the clip more interesting than it just placed straight in the middle (like photography)and can also give a sense of direction.

All the research I have done has came from recent and/ or successful thriller movies and shows. This allows us to get inspiration from recent films and older ones, comparing the difference in years and finding which aspects of the films went well and which have changed over time.