In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

Vicky Stacey

This shot is conventional of a Thriller because it is an extreme close up, concealing identity, which in this case, is the murderer. I saw this in many films, such as Paranormal Activity. I think in both cases, due to these camera angles, we decide the character to be dangerous and an outcast of society. This creates fear, as we don’t like things we can’t understand.

This close up shows a lifeless body being dragged. Only showing a section of a victim makes the audience feel uncomfortable as they know that someone is dead, developing the convention of death and murder into our crime thriller. Our thriller revolves around a crime, which is a key convention of the thriller genre as well. From this shot, we learn that the character is young, and trendy by the costume. Eg. Her trainers are bright blue.

The use of every day situations, in our case using Twitter, is commonly used in thrillers to both, shock the audience into understanding the events could happen to them, and create strong contrast to the film’s events later on when the story develops. This shot also helps to suggest the murderer is looking for a new victim, that foreshadows the events to follow.

A definite convention of an opening sequence is having credits. Clearly, here we have used credits to show actors involved within the film. Another example is later on when we introduce the directors. We chose white on black, which is conventional of credit openings as it ensures the text is read by the viewers. Furthermore, we chose a clear font, and situated it in the right of the screen as the eye naturally reads left to right, making sure the text is taken in.

A common characteristic of an opening is transitions between either credits, or clips. This is conventional of an opening and is seen in the opening for “Skyfall”. Transitions add a professional feel and make everything look neater. We mainly use “Fade In Fade out” transition’s from the “Dissolve” tabs. This creates a professional feel, and creates tension as the audience are waiting for something to happen during the prolonged silence.

This close up shot shows only a characters hands with a red/orange filter effect added. This has connotations of blood, and danger which develops the convention of crime being the main theme in our thriller.