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

A Thriller is a Film that incorporates many different conventions and ideas, which overall create an eerie atmosphere and a sense of mystery, a few examples are: the characters and the aura about them, music/sound and cliff-hangers.

Shot types are also a key part of making an effective Thriller film. High and low angle shots can create varied effects about the characters shown in these different ways, for example; a low angle shot can show fear, cowardice, and unimportance, whereas a high angle shot can show authority, important and power etc, these camera techniques can also be used to represent Hero’s and Villain’s in films. Both these types of camera shot were used in our Thriller Opening, to portray the explained effects; where I was shown to be powerful, and Lewis was shown to be less powerful.

The two above shots are screen-grabs from our Thriller Opening. The left shot shows Toby as powerful and he appears to be in-control as he is shown to be taller and therefore suggesting he is more important. The shot on the right is a high angle shot that shows the opposite of the one on the left. It shows Lewis to be over-powered, and shorter, therefore weaker.

In a scene from ‘I Am Legend’ there is a car driving through a city street, where the camera is angled to look down at the car, to make the rest of the scenery (the city block and buildings) look so much more massive and intimidating.

Sound and music can also be a very important feature in a Thriller, when a character does something or performs an action, this can be backed-up by a sound or piece of music to emphasise the effect it creates. In the shower murder scene from ‘Psycho’ this is used to emphasise the stabbing of the knife. Sharp and harsh high pitched sounds are heard to make the audience fully feel the pain along with the victim; expect the same effect is created through sound, not physical actions.

In our Thriller Opening, we used the same sort of sound to products the explained effects. We used eyrie sound effects and a short sound file we found on the Apple Macs. These added atmosphere to the final product, and I feel it makes the Opening a lot more enjoyable than if there was no background sound-track.

Mise-en-scene is another very important part of Thrillers. It can be used to suggest certain things about and area or environment that is featured in the film. Throughout our Thriller Opening we placed certain objects in the background to purposely create different effects and auras. We placed a few gardening tools like; a pickaxe, a sledgehammer, a pair of shears...etc, to create a more menacing atmosphere about the filming set, rather than just a plain, boring shed. I also feel that the shed is a much more suitable location for an ‘off-beat’ high tension thriller, as it’s not a usual place to film a movie: it’s very grubby and involves the audience a lot more as a result of the close-ups and tight filming space.

We used some props in our Opening that we felt added a better atmosphere, as to make it feel more like an Interrogation or an Investigative type movie. The document that Toby shows Lewis was added because it looks like an actually report that an Investigator would possibly use, and that  same sort of document is seen in many different Thriller Films such as Se7en, so therefore I believe it follows these conventions.

The lighting used in our was special designed and angled to only show certain key features and leave others in a more shadowy light. For example, we angled the light towards Lewis, to show his face more clearly than Toby’s, this was because we wanted to make Toby seem like a shrouded character.

 In the ‘Psycho’ shower scene, the bathroom is the main mise-en-scene feature at the time; as it shows that horrible things can in-fact happen (in this case a murder) in the places we think are our safest.