1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. Titling – colour, font style, over image or black, timing, credits presentation Our film followed a number of conventions shown by some of the films we analyzed. One of these conventions used in our film was to do our credits over black screens, we also followed the convention of all films (Not just our genre) to show the main or more respectable characters to be shown first in our credits. The title of our film was also larger for emphasis which is done by many other thriller films (As shown in The Dark Knight below). In addition we included our film distribution company as all other films do meaning we followed and used all conventions of titling and did not develop or challenge the conventions of titling.
3. Camera Movement (panning, tracking, crane shot and crabbing etc) We developed the idea seen in many of the thriller films I analyzed as where they used Pan shots commonly on a group of people the audience is interested in we used it on locations of importance combined with a high angle. Furthermore while many thriller films zoom out or in of locations so the audience may focus on an object or person of interest (Shown in the picture in the middle from one of the films I analyzed the Dark Knight- Zooming into a location of interest) , and our film applied and developed this idea on focusing on a character of interest and zooming out of them so, while it in the beginning shows barely any of the character and they are shown to be mysterious, the zoom out slowly unravels the character to the audience and their intentions.
4. Framing of Shot (CU, MLS, ELS etc) One conventional shot used typically throughout thriller films is the Close up (CU) shot on objects or characters of interest, this was replicated in our film to a large degree as we used multiple CU’s with all of our characters in our final product. We also made use of the Medium close up (MCU) which is also generally used in thriller film during their first introduction to characters which is what we used in our film in our introduction to character “Rosalyn”, as it started in an extreme close up, followed by zooming out and ending on an MCU. We followed many of the conventions of framing shots for our genre and did not challenge or develop any of them.
5. Camera Angles (high and low angles) While a convention of thriller films is to use high angles on characters high in power and significance, we developed the concept to using a high angle accompanied with a pan shot to introduce our audience to our opening location. Other than this not many other camera angles were included in our final product.
6. Selection of mise-en-scène including colour, figure, props, lighting, objects, location and setting The props used in thriller films are very dependent on the story as with all films, we used a mobile phone in our final product showing our characters to be modern and technologically adept. Whereas the costumes used by our characters (suits) show them to be important and high in status which also challenges the conventions as we have a female dressed in the suit which doesn’t seem to be the case in most films in general, not just our genre. While the female where’s a wig to back up the idea of femininity, she breaks the conventions as it seems she is in a place of power and authority.
7. Editing directions(Match cuts, jump cut, reverse shots – cuttingrhymnetc) Something commonly used in thriller films are Jump cuts, something that we used a lot throughout our final product during a conversation between are two main characters in attempt to build suspense as in the jump cuts not much was shown of the characters adding more mystery. Throughout their conversation we also increased the cutting rate to build to a miniature climax of their true identities.
8. Sound techniques(diegetic, non diegetic, silence, dialogue and music etc) We used our dialogue in our film to show audiences the relationships between our characters as many other films do. We also used the the convention of thriller films to have some non diegetic sound play in the background and act as a sound bridge in the opening of our film, this would set the atmosphere of our film allowing our audience to guess the genre as well as possibly getting some insight into the characters or location about to be shown. We followed many of the conventions of sound from thriller films as we thought they would work perfectly within ours.
9. Actor’s positioning and movement The positioning of our characters was like that of any film keeping our main and most important characters in the middle of the frame so they would not be cut off from the audience. The movement of our characters suggested very formal and authoritative giving the audience an in depth look at our character and their mannerisms E.g. when we see Rosalyn fixing her tie making her seem organized and driven. So we followed the basic conventions of thriller films when dealing with positioning and movement.