Question 1 of Evaluation - "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

First and foremost, many thriller films have inspired a lot of different characteristics of my media product - the use of these characteristics all differentiate from film to film which is what makes my media product unique and shows my ability to use characteristics from across a wide spectrum of films. From first sitting down and planning my thriller film, right through to the shooting, editing and then publishing of it, I have really thought hard about the costume, location, camera angles, lighting, soundtrack, and other vital attributes. In question 1 of my evaluation, I will be discussing the above entities and how I think they have made my opening to a thriller film a success.

Costume

I sat down with Austen, my group member, and discussed a variety of costumes we could use, but most importantly, which costume would fit our thriller film the best in terms of reinforcing generic thriller conventions, or possibly even challenging generic thriller conventions. After much deliberation, me and Austen decided on our characters wearing modern, and possibly even fashionable clothing - in a way, this challenges generic thriller conventions because of the generic use of costumes in thriller films - take ‘The Third Man’ for example - black-market opportunist Harry Lime wears a classic thriller film costume which reinforces the genre. His costume consists of a top hat with dark clothing and an overcoat, something which me and Austen wanted to differentiate from in our opening.

Although many films i’ve watched do indeed reinforce the thriller genre in terms of costume, for example, ‘The Third Man’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’, our characters are young - in the modern day, people are wearing more modern, colourful, fashionable clothes and so our costumes reflect that.  

I watched the 2000 film ‘Essex Boys’ and took great note of the clothes which Jason (Sean Bean) was wearing when beating up the man - he is wearing a yellow and black patterned shirt and trousers which is not reflective of the thriller genre at all and so, ultimately, this is where the inspiration came from.

Location

Our location was very important - we wanted to take inspiration from as many films as we could. For location, we really wanted to stick to generic thriller conventions as, in my eyes, the location ultimately sets the scene of a thriller film and how it’s going to pan out - if the location isn’t intriguing or gripping enough, it wont grab attention. First off, ‘Essex Boys’. Towards the end of our opening to the thriller film, very near the shipping containers, is a swamp area - the ground is wet and muddy and the atmosphere is very cold, much like the marshes from ‘Essex Boys’ where Jason dumps his victim. 

Further, at the beginning of the film, there is a long pathway with a vanishing point - this was inspired by the film ‘The Third Man’. Anna walks down the pathway towards the camera and away from the vanishing point. In our opening, we altered this idea slightly and made our character walk down the pathway away from the character and towards the vanishing point. This shot is the very first shot in our opening and is at the beginning for a reason - it added a sense of mystery as the audience wonder where our character is going. Is he walking in to the unknown? What’s going to happen?

Camera angles and shots

Camera angles and shots have been inspired from across the board and from many different thriller films, including ‘The Third Man’, ‘Jaws’. As mentioned above, the long pathway with a vanishing point which was originally inspired by the film ‘The Third Man’ contains a low angle shot with just the the feet of the character in view - as the characters slowly walk away from the camera, more of the person is shown. This creates a sense of mystery and builds suspense as the audience wonder who the character is as he comes in to view. To add even more of a twist on to this, we positioned the camera is such a way so as to create a horizontal tilt effect. This effect slightly disorientates the audience which makes the shot even more of a mystery and very intriguing for the person to watch. We have used many tilt shots throughout the entire opening of our thriller film for this very reason.

Close up shots also feature a lot in our film. Close up shots are a strong generic convention amongst thriller films - this is used to build a great deal of tension for the audience and to restrict their view of external angles. This forces the audience to concentrate on a particular part of the shot - this part of the shot could be important for the rest of the film or it could just be to add suspense.

Over the shoulder shots are used also in our film, mainly as the the camera follows one character and the other character is in front - this is a very effective way of showing both characters on screen from the same angle but can also reflect how the character is feeling or acting because the camera is situated from his/her point of view. I done some research in to thriller films using the over the shoulder shot and came across the scene from the 1997 film ‘Jackie Brown’. It is the Robert De Niro and Bridget Fonda scene where Robert shoots Bridget and then gets back in his car. He drives away and the camera is held in an over the shoulder shot for around 30 seconds - personally, I thought that this puts the audience in the characters shoes and so this is where the over the shoulder shot was inspired from.

Another great shot we used was the very unique dolly zoom - after seeing this shot from the film ‘Jaws’, we decided to give it a go during filming and it paid off! This shot is used in our film towards the ending as the victim turns around and sees the figure standing in front of him. We used this shot as it shows the expression in the victims face as he sees the figure. Not only this, but I personally think that the scare in the victims face is reflected on the audience as they watch and experience the same feelings as the victim at that specific moment.

Lighting

From the outset, me and Austen had plans to make our thriller film in black and white, however, this wasn’t set in stone as we hadn’t even started to shoot yet and there was still room for change, but more importantly, we wanted to experiment with the colour filter and the black and white filter and the editing stage. We ultimately decided on black and white and added a black and white filter to our edit. It was very noticeable that the film, even after changed to black and white, was indeed still quite bright, something which we really wanted to change, and so we dramatically lowered the brightness of our edit and it looked far better. This change reinforced generic thriller conventions because our film looked very dark and murky which is how we wanted it to look.

Moreover, at the filming stage, we decided to film in the daylight. Me and Austen didn’t want to film at dusk because of the risk of it looking too much like a horror film - we wanted to strengthen the genre conventions by filming during daytime hours. Because of this decision there was no need for any lights to brighten up the scene.

Referring to ‘The Third Man’ once again, the long pathway with the vanishing point looks far more mysterious in the light as the surrounding scene is visible. We thought that having a scene without the surroundings visible to the audience would dramatically reduce the suspense because of the restricted view. If the surroundings are visible to the audience then this will make them more intrigued as to what is going on, in turn, building up that all important suspense.

Soundtrack

After much deliberation and countless hours of thought about the soundtrack, we decided on one track which lasts just over 2 minutes, plenty long enough to last throughout the opening to our thriller film. This particular piece of music is a very thriller like soundtrack which combines a sense of mystery and suspense to really grip the audience and build curiosity. The soundtrack is of a piano which is reinforces generic thriller genre conventions - the piano starts off playing very lightly and slowly builds throughout the opening to a strong, forceful and, in a way, frightening ending where the victim is attacked. We purposely chose this soundtrack so as to create this effect and build the suspense gradually rather than banging out the soundtrack straight away which would not build any tension whatsoever.

The ‘light to strong’ sort of soundtrack was originally inspired by a children’s film I watched many years ago, ‘Finding Nemo’. Although this may sound quite childish, the soundtrack is used very cleverly so as to build that all important suspense which fundamentally keeps the audience gripped and titillated.