Q1

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

After watching many thriller openings, I found there were very strong similarities within them, these conventions are used in every opening hoping to create a tense, thrilling emotion.

The movies I chose to look at were:

Seven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2gsEI34CE

Butterfly Effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8_dgqfPXFg

Shutter Island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iaYLCiq5RM

Quantum of Solace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYC_CBNtiM

These are the main conventions of a thriller; I have chosen to show this through a mindmap:

Within the first few minutes of a thriller, you want to be taken in by the film enough to watch the rest of it; this can be created easily by certain 5 simple factors;

· Titles

· Narrative

· Camera Shots

· Sound

· Mise En Scène

Titles are a huge part of a movie, they can hint at what the movie will be like with different fonts, transitions, titles can show the name of the film and also the name of the people who have worked on it, such as the editor, director and the actors, this will give a hint as to how good the quality of the movie will be, a good example of this is The Terminator, they have done their titles showing people in the film or people working on it in a very computerised style and done the main title in a very robotic, bold font, this mirrors the characteristics of the main character, the terminator.

The Narrative within the first couple of minutes will be what the audience will be most intrigued to see, as that is what will set up the rest of the film and will determine whether people want to carry on watching it, the director needs to be able to meet the needs of the audience, which is excitement, suspense, mystery and action, this is done through the use of different styles of narrative, such as the flashback, showing what has gone on in the past and showing how he/she has got to the point he/she has got to where they are now, or a dual narrative, this allows the director to tell a story with two different perspectives, giving the audience more interaction to see both sides of the story, this can also be done to show contrast between lives and events or similarities.

Camera shots can help present characters and locations within the opening of a thriller, it can also help create mood and emotion, such as close ups, these help the director show the audience something critically important within a scene, or use it to hide what else is going on and focus on one point, creating mystery, reactions shot, these help the audience to see how a character has reacted to a certain event, this helps set the mood, being that the character is sad or happy and a establishing shot, this helps to set up location, giving the audience a feel or surroundings and environment.

Sound is one of the most important factors of a thriller opening, non-diegetic sound can be used, such as dramatic soundtracks to create emotion and feeling, however diegetic sound can be left on from the raw footage, such as screams, doors slamming and heavy breathing, though these can be put on through non-diegetic sound, most films like to keep a natural sound to enhance the suspense and tension.

Mise en scène is a huge aspect you need to look into when making a movie, as it basically means, everything in the shot, so this is everything the camera picks up when filming, this can be used for an advantage if planned properly, allowing you to cut out certain people or props from the view, this can help create mystery or build tension.

In the movie Seven for example, music is played in the background throughout the opening credits of the movie, this music helps set out what the movie will be like, it uses very dramatic, eerie music, along with distant, high pitched screams, the song doesn’t follow a conventional style, as they have used an instrumental, this allows the audience to place all their focus on what is going on, creating the feel that certain sections of the film will be not quite as they seem, or not particularly ‘conventional’.

The titles of this movie are done is a very strange and eerie way, they over lay clips during the opening of the film, the style of the writing is shown to be in a handwriting style, however they are in a very old style and seem to be worn away or scratched at, this use of titles has worked extremely well because the use of the over laying of clips helps keep the suspense high yet not revealing a lot of information, so it is very mysterious as to what he is doing and why he is doing it.

The camera shots within the opening credits of Seven are very unstable and sharp, they consist of mainly close up shots or even extreme close ups, this helps holds the audiences’ focus to what the director wants, enabling them to hide certain aspects from you, such as when the character is writing in his journal, you always see him writing in it in deep lengths, however, you are never able to read anything he has written, you are only given short, sudden cuts of certain words, this creates mystery and leads the audience to feel uncomfortable. As well as the credits being layed over shots they have altered the opacity of some shots, making two shots overlap; this technique is well used here as it helps show the audience that time is going by and adds to the effect that certain things will be hidden from you.

The storyline of the opening credits is left very open to thought, it creates certain idea paths, such as him being a detective, or a killer, or a robber, this is quite unconventional of a thriller, normally, you are given a clip of a certain character or event that the movie will then mainly focus upon, however the director of this movie clearly wanted to keep his storyline very mysterious, this works really well for this movie as you are instantly drawn into the storyline and you want to find out why the person is doing what he is doing.

Conventions of a thriller opening:

Conventions are used by directors to simply hook their target audience, however some directors choose to change or subvert conventions when making their thrillers, this can create suspense as the audience will not be expecting what is to come, this can help keep an audience watching. The Butterfly Effect use this option of staying away from conventions by having the antagonist finding his diary and reading through it, the movie then shows how he got there through certain events in his life, this is done through frequent flashbacks as he reads deeper into his diary.

Luc Besson, the director of the 1994 movie Leon stays clear of most conventions of a thriller opening, though you start with a very simple location shot, taking you around the city, it then cuts to extreme close ups of two men talking, however the lighting is extremely dark, the combination of dark lighting and extreme close ups helps mask the identity of both characters, this use of staying away from conventions helps create a very effective mysterious feel, you are also not immediately introduced to the antagonist, like in most movies, which in turn makes it harder to figure out who is the bad guy and the good guy.

For our thriller, we decided to take little sections we like from other movies and incorporate it within our thriller, I feel this has helped us create a very effective, bold thriller for our audience.

We took a major influence for our music from the film Insidious, they used a very old style song within one of their scenes, after watching this movie, this is a very effective way to build tension, as the older music has more of a past and is a lot more deep and eerie than a simple soundtrack, although this isn't very conventional in a thriller, we found it worked extremely well in ours as it linked to our old, war style theme and we found that the contrast between the happy music and the eerie, tense atmosphere enhances the suspense within out thriller opening.

Whilst watching the Shutter Island opening, we found the shot of the old lady extremely disturbing, we found that her face disfigurements, with the cuts on her neck and sunken eyes worked really well, it influenced us to look into more films and try to find more examples where the director has used makeup on a character to make them mutilated or strange, we looked at many films such as The Grudge and The Hills Have Eyes, however found that The Dark Knight rises was the best choice for us, we chose to use the idea of having severe burns on one of our character’s face, which immediately links to the history of our location, as it was burnt down, this is quite conventional of a thriller, using unnatural creatures or body disfigurements to scare the audience, however we wanted to keep our thriller as realistic as possible.

The Butterfly Effect also influenced out thriller opening due to their use of flashbacks and how they effectively created tension and suspense within the film, it also gave the film a large sense of mystery and confusion. We chose to use flashbacks in our thriller, not as a way to see what has previously happened, but as a way to show what is happening elsewhere, we could have just used a simple split screen idea, but we found changing the opacity of the clips and overlaying them in certain areas create a lot more suspense and mystery, though this is very unconventional within a thriller, we felt it helped hold the tension in our thriller and keep it growing, as you are not able to see quite what it is you are being shown, this also mirrors the fact things are very much hidden from you in our thriller.


How we used Conventions:

Our location has a very withered and old feel to it; I believe this is very conventional of a thriller, the building is withered and old, this type of building is usually used because it creates a creepy feel to the movie and lets the audience know that the main storyline will be set around this house and what has happened in it, however it’s not just the building that is conventional, we had our area set around a forest, this is used to create a sense of claustrophobia and leaves you to feel alone.

For our props we used a record player, this was used in our production as the thing Kieran uses to play the music off, this also mirrors the fact we chose to have very old style music, this is very unconventional, usually directors have set their movie to have new equipment for props, such as using a radio to play the music for an example, this will be to relate their audience to their movie, however, I feel our use of straying from conventions has really linked with our movie and made it very effective.

Jake is set as the protagonist in our thriller, his character is very conventional of a thriller, as he is also an innocent guy, this allows the audience to feel sorry for the character as they see what he is walking in to, he slowly starts to release something strange is happening inside the building. We had Jake dress in casual clothes, consisting of a hoody and jeans, this is to make Jake seem as down to earth as possible, enhancing his innocence.

Our titles are very unconventional of a thriller, usually they are set to give a feel of the movie to the audience, such as titles with blood dripping down or creepy music playing behind them, however, we have chose to go for more of a bold approach with our titles, we just to have each line of the hashtag (#) to have a thud type sound and then have the lettering of the rest of the title and our names to come in very promptly afterwards, although this is unconventional, i feel we have created a bold and unique title sequence.