In what ways does your media product use, develop

or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?Evaluation question 1

Our narrative is fairly unconventional in that it shows a point in the narrative from close to the end of the timeline at the start of the film.

However, this is not a completely original idea. We had inspiration from other films that have a similar structure such as the interrogation scene from Mission Impossible III and the building explosions from Fight Club.

The concept of a journalist exposing leaked documents hurtful to someone in authority is also a previously explored theme.

Other films such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo follow a journalist seeking justice for the information they have uncovered so we tried to pick out how they created a strong thriller film and apply it to ours while, at the same time, introducing our own ideas to create the final piece.

Narrative

We used numerous conventional techniques for our final opening in order to best fit the thriller genre and create the most professional opening we could.

These included implementing the standard indusry 180 degree rule in order to not confuse and disorientate the audience when carrying out shot/reverse/shots.

As for unconventional camerawork, our use of focus pulls was fairly disassociated from other conventional thriller films with the extent and way in which we used them. We used a deep focus from the commissioner pulled into a shallow focus on the protagonist’s hand in order to emphasise the importance of what the protagonist is about to say and create anticipation for what is coming. As well as this, we also implemented a shallow focus on the commissioner’s shoulder with the reporters out of focus, furthering the isolated atmosphere we aimed to create around the commissioner at that moment.

Camerawork

Mise-en-scene For our mise-en-scene, we tried to make the

scenes look as authentic as possible through realistic looking settings, props and costume.

Our settings of a busy conference room and an isolated interrogation room both conform to the stereotypical locations of a thriller movie.

Similarly, for props we used most prominently a handgun as well as the expected items (podium, notice board, microphone) for a press conference while for costume we had a standard police uniform for the commissioner and a white shirt for the journalist so were conventional in this respect.

However, as for the shot construction, we were fairly challenging towards the conventions by using intimate extreme close-ups on the commissioner such as the shots of the sweat as well as the eye.

For our music choice, George created his own non-diegetic background music to use over the initial walk to the conference. It consisted of muffled electronic sounds in a slow but rhythmic beat to build tension and create the feeling of something ominous ahead, thus fitting with the thriller genre conventions of other thriller films that open with a similar soundtrack.

With our diegetic sounds like dialogue, we wrote vague lines for the commissioner to say in the interrogation scene and left the details for the journalist’s questions as ambiguous as possible in the conference scene. This was done purposely to not give away any major plot details so early on in the film such as we witnessed done in other thriller film openings when carrying out our research such as in The Prestige.

Soundtrack

We used mostly standard editing techniques for the final edit in order to conform to the genre as much as possible to achieve the proven industry effects.

These include using long clips with few cuts for the conference scene once the journalist reveals what he knows to emphasise the horror the commissioner is feeling and juxtaposing it to the fast cuts when George fires his gun in the interrogation scene representing the danger the journalist is clearly in.

We also used common editing methods such as an eye-line match but, in addition to simply using these methods archetypically, we also experimented by implementing our own takes on these techniques. Our eye-line match on the commissioner during the conference scene for example first showed a shot of the commissioner as he stared with horror before cutting to a shot of the press he was looking at but with them particularly out of focus. This helped to further the emotion the commissioner is feeling and create a more poignant shot.

Editing