Q7: LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE MAIN TASK?

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?




 

Q5: How did you attract and address your audience?

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Q3: What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Q1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

So, the sub-genre we chose to use was a crime-thriller.  We chose this sub-genre because there is plenty of opportunities for suspense, and I believe that using suspense in film can make it more engaging with the audience, one example of a thriller that used suspense to engage it audience is  “Taken”, this thriller used suspense at various points in order  to draw it audience into the film, therefore making it more engaging.

One thriller convention that we used in order to make our opening a crime-thriller,  is we made sure the sound we used created chilling atmosphere as well as using discordant sounds, in order to make it uncomfortable   for the viewer to listen to. We used this effect in the post production because the uncomfortable sounds allowed the audience to feel what the character is feeling in that particular scene.  This is an effect that is commonly used in thrillers  for example the title sequence of “seven” the discordant sound is used as the titles change. We also used the loud discordant sound as in an attempt to fully grasp the audience’s attention when they weren’t expecting it.

One unconventional aspect of our thriller is the fact that we couldn’t obtain low key lighting when filming, this is because the location we used was in a remote area that fitted the narrative, and however it meant the lighting of our scenes was dependant on the particular weather at the time. We couldn’t film at night because we didn’t have access to the correct lighting equipment that would allow use to get clear shots. We ended up shooting on a gloomy Saturday, and I believe this helped the mise en scene of our thriller. Thrillers are well known for having low key lighting because it help keep significations and red hearings within the narrative without giving too much away to the audience, because we couldn’t get low key lighting with our location we attempted to combat this by decreasing the exposer and saturation of shots this gave us darker shots which are commonly used in crime thrillers.

When doing my research I noticed that in thrillers the antagonist is left as an enigma to the audience, so in my opening scene I made sure that the audience identity was kept a secret through the use of particular camera shots for example

These shots only show the audience a small portion of the antagonists’ identity which creates a enigma in my opening scene of who is the antagonist? And why has he kidnapped the girl? These are questions I intend the audience to be asking when watching my opening because I believe having enigmas in a film keeps them interesting and engaging.

During my research I noticed that the narrative of thriller does not always follow your standard todorovs theory, for example most films start with the equilibrium, then disequilibrium and then the attempt to resolve and so on. I noticed that most crime thrillers start with disequilibrium just like in “lucky number sleven”. I wanted to replicate this idea so in my opening I start with two homeless people, living under a bridge and one ends up getting kidnapped, I believe that is an ideal disequilibrium opening.