Evaluation - Question 1

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

Enigma

From researching different types of thriller, our group was able to create a plot which leaves on a cliffhanger and also involves different forms of mystery throughout. From this shot in our thriller, the question posed to the audience is 'Who is this mysterious man?'

We got the idea of having this enigmatic man from the opening of Kill Bill one. From this we see the hand of this man but throughout we cannot know who this man actually is. We also cannot be sure of what significance this man has in this film and this relates very closely to our film as we also are unable to establish what significance our enigmatic man has in our opening which leaves it open for the audience to debate and guess on their own.

This clip also presents us with another question. We used this clip after inspiration from the opening to Kill Bill one as seen above. It offers to questions to the audience of 'what has happened to this girl?' as she is bleeding and weak. This also shows the flashback from our film, being the same as Kill Bill.

We could also question 'What has this girl done to deserve this punishment?' During the opening to Kill Bill one we can't tell what the girl has done to be left bleeding and injured; which also relates highly to our film as the aim was to mirror Kill Bill and create that identical sense of the audience unaware of what this girl has done to be left injured like this.

Costume

When deciding on the costume for our thriller, there were 2 main aspects that we wanted to try and establish from observing this in other thrillers. The first aspect we wanted to focus on was what our male figure was going to wear. From analysising 'Essex Boys' I found that Sean Bean's character was wearing a leather jacket. This would show his hard-hitting life and him being a character which sticks to the shadows and away from others; with him leading his life of crime.

From our thriller, we were able to use the idea of the leather jacket. It helps us to symbolise him as being that man who stays away from civilisation in a sense and staying to the shadows. This is supported by the fact that the audience do not see his face and are still not knowing of who he is.

The 2nd aspect we looked at was the potential use of a pearl necklece. As seen in Once Upon A Time In America, Eve is wearing a pearl necklece which symbolised tears. It could also have been an insight to what was going to happen next; in this case, it could have portrayed that death or tragedy were going to occur in the not so distant future.

The use of a pearl necklece assisted our aim to create that sense of tragedy or danger which was going to happen in the future of the film. This shows the audience longer down the opening that she has been hurt and goes into danger after seeing the man in the leather jacket. In some sense it can challenge the conventions presented as we don't actually know what happens to the girl, hence the cliffhanger.

Location

There was some debate on where the thriller would be shot. We came to the conclusion that we should shoot in Norwich city centre. This was because of the many concrete streets that there are. In the shot below we can see the concrete street where our thriller took place.

In these two shots, we challenged the forms and conventions of media products ever so slightly. In the shot from 'Essex Boys' we can see the wet, shiny road where the car has just came from whereas in our shot above, the concrete is quite clearly dry. It only came down to the wrong day at the wrong time. However this challenges what this shot below shows as it shows that sense of nightmare or unreality which our thriller doesn't and only builds up to at the end of the opening.

Camera angles

After reviewing and analysising many different thrillers, I was able to put a lot forward when it came to deciding what shot and angles we would use at specific moments in the opening. For example, we used tilt shots to show a sense of confusion to the scene and make the audience seem disorientated.

We also used a variety of close ups when filming. For example this shot from a thriller (Witness) shows one of the various close ups that can be used. It helps to allow the audience to identify the main object within the shot. In this case it is the driving license of the police officer.

Similarly in our thriller, we used a close up the scrunched up paper and the foot from when the girl see's the wanted poster.

This challenge the use of close up because regularly the close up is used to show emotions of a character but in this sense and the two pictures above, it shows an object just so we can see what they are more clearly.

Lighting

 Lighting we used ambient and non ambient lighting, particularly how I used the convention of chiaroscuro lighting in our flashback to indicate nightmare. This lighting design that I used is also strongly developed in The Third Man. In my thriller we developed the use of ambient and non-ambient lighting by using for example, a spotlight for our flashback.

Titles

I also used conventions in my opening to my thriller film to include mt titles and cliffhangers.

Here in Se7en, the titles used are present for longer than normal which would show that obviously the director has more time to show them all. We can also understand how the titles are all over the place which is where I used them and put my credits in different positions and developed it by, for example, putting my 'Missing' at the end onto a black screen as it creates tha suspence.