Evaluation Questions - Question 1 (In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real meida products)

The conventions of my group’s thriller contained a suspenseful account of a failed attack (Crime). In one of the scenes the innocent girl is attack by someone (attacker) for no reason and he fails to finish off his prey. This part of our film was done so that we could draw in the attention of the audience making the want to know and see more. One of the last shots where the girl who was attacked opens the envelope to find a note saying ‘it’s not fun if your hearts not in it’, after this the opening sequence automatically goes in to a cliff hanger. This holds the audience’s attention, which then makes them more aware.

As we as a group went for the subgenre of crime/drama/mystery thriller, this was because the main plot was based on someone being attacked in a cold, scary and dangerous location. We decided to go for crime as audience would easily be able to relate to this type of thriller and if this was not true it was great to see how the antagonist (the attacker) decides to attack a vulnerable passerby you could say (protagonist).

We used a typical convention of thrillers and that was the location of the main scenes, he setting had actually played a big part in making the audience see some verisimilitude. We did this because we know people do not always feel safe walking through path ways where there is hardly any light. This was a typical setting for a thriller and we wanted d the audience to feel what the person who was attacked was feeling.

Another typical convention we used was a type of a detective situation, where we made police noticeable in the opening sequence. We did this as a group so that the audience would see the verisimilitude once again. Having a shot of the police station hopefully should have shown the crime part of the opening sequence, also showed the realism therefore making audience more alert and wanting to know whether the mystery would ever get solved. This also relates to the costumes the actors wore, for example I was told by the group to wear a shirt, tie and trousers so that I look the part (detective).

As you can see we used the look of Morgan Freeman in 'Se7en'. We chose this look because detectives must have the smart sophisticated look. This was done to add realisim because you do not see detectives in rags and causal wear unless they are going undercover for a job.

I guess our film challenged the convention because unlike those well known films such as ‘Bourne Identity’ we decided to change the background sound to more of a suspenseful beat, rather than an upbeat song.  We decide to use a small part of Madonna’s song ‘Live to tell’. We used the introduction and a bit more of the song throughout the opening, as we believed that the title of the song says a lot about our thriller. The slow tempo allows the audience to wait for something to happen; we went for the digetic sound throughout each action scene so the slow music builds up the tension. Films in the industry that go for slow tempo music during an action scene the suspense  for example, ‘The Last House on the Left’.