The Covenant thriller evaluation question 1

1. 1) IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR
MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP
OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?

2. CHANDLERS CATEGORIES FOR
GENRE CATEGORISATION
• I will attempt to answer this question to the best of my ability
by using Daniel Chandler's Genre Theory. This theory is split
into 5 different categories which are as follows:
• Characters
• Setting
• Iconography
• Narrative
• Theme

3. CHARACTERS
• In our thriller film, this particular section of the theory is subverted,
as in Chandler's theory it states that there is a protagonist and an
antagonist, whereas in our film, there is no definite protagonist,
with the who seems like an inspector at the beginning turning
out to be a cultist, and thus antagonist who is terrifying a
teenage boy, and while the boy is essentially a criminal, who
comes across and rude and arrogant, his rough background
and family life etc, leads to the audience offering sympathy. The
character is never identified as a protagonist or hero so to speak,
he is only offered sympathy for his struggles in life. This essentially
offers no clear definition between good and evil as both of the
characters are evil.

4. SETTING
• For this section, our thriller adhered to the classification of it's
genre as the location of the main filming was a series of
abandoned and run-down warehouses. Also during the
beginning and end of our opening, an interview was taking
place in a very dark room, thus created suspense and an eerie
atmosphere for the audience, perhaps wondering why the room
would be dark with only a small ray of light illuminating the hands
of the 'inspector'. We chose both of these settings and we
believed it made the scenes seem very suspenseful and created
a somewhat eerie atmosphere, which are commonly found in
films of the same genre.

5. ICONOGRAPHY
• Our thriller most certainly adheres to this category.
Iconography is the use of some sort of symbol that holds
significant meaning in the plot of a thriller. For our thriller, a
symbol located on the cultist's arm was used. This symbol
was essentially the symbol of a cult that the inspector or
cultist were a part of. This was a key partofthe storyline and
thus of a large amount of interest to the audience, as
without this being pointed out, the story would have made
little or no sense.

6. NARRATIVE
• This is basically the story of the thriller. Traditional thrillers mostly
use things such as murder mysteries, and while our thriller is a
mystery, it is not clear what that mystery is, whether it is a murder,
or anything else for that matter, throughout our opening this is
not clear, so in that respect, our thriller subverts this common
categorisation. although in a lot of aspects our thriller adheres to
this category, it is apparent that in the key ones it does not. It
adheres to the mystery side of things, but not the type of mystery
that is commonly found in thrillers, usually murder. While the main
antagonist pretending to be some sort of protagonist and
displaying himself as a police officer makes no place safe for the
other character, and while these places would usually seen as
safe, i.e. a police station, it appears that wherever he goes, he
can't escape.

7. THEME
• Our thriller subverts and adheres to the standard of a thriller
genre. Where the cult is a very strong group as a whole, and
the boy alone is very weak, the cult may be in great danger
if the boy is not captured and stopped from telling people
the secrets which he has seen, both the cult and the boy
are threatening to one another. Usually there would be high
odds going against one or the other, where in reality they
are both threatening and dangerous to each other, even if
they do not know it.