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

There are a number of forms and conventions related to both short films and films in the stalker/thriller genre. I would say that forms of short films would be their lack of traditional story progression, all the ones that I looked into had a positive feel to them and they also tend to appeal to a broad demographic. Conventions of films in a similar genre would be that the relationship is often between a make and a female character, there is often a scene involving a struggle but also within this type of film it is normally the woman that is the victim.UsesI think that I have used a variety of conventions relating to the genre in my product. I stuck with the idea of a boy doing the kidnapping. I had originally considered having a boy and a girl in the film and then having the girl as the stalker but after talking to people within my target audience discovered that this wasn’t a very popular idea. I think that a boy kidnapping somebody seems more realistic so audiences would respond better and it gives a feeling of realism which adds to the sinister feel of the film. Although there have been many successful films in which the female character’s do the stalking and kidnapping such as Hard Candy and Misery, both of these films involve torture of some kind and that was a convention that I wanted to avoid.Another convention that I tried to utilise was location. I wanted an effective looking venue for the confrontation at the end and found that in most films there is often a main place, as seen at the end of all three Scream films. Originally I was going to use an old deserted looking house but decided to look into using a warehouse as I thought this would give a more conventional feel. Also being able to use the forklift meant I would have access to a forklift which I knew would lead to a lot of possibilities to experiment with different shot types.Yet another convention of films that involve a stalker is the fact that without fail, the victim always goes into the house or through the door that they know they shouldn’t. This is done in 100’s of films from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to House of Wax so it seemed necessary to involve it in mine, I decided to put it in for a number of reasons but I thought it would be a way to get the audience’s attention as the character has been edging around the gate for days, so once he goes through it people know that nothing good is going to happen.Finally I think that another convention of thriller/stalker films that I used was the techniques. I tried to include establishing shots so that the audience could see that it was just a normal looking place, once again trying to emphasise the feeling of realism. I tried to show a lot of close ups of the two characters in order to see their expressions. Because there is no dialogue in the film I had to rely on facial expression to portray to the audience what was happening and how that made the characters feel. Finally I tried to include a lot of two shots in the scenes where the two characters were together, I thought that this would emphasise their relationship, or even lack of it although I didn’t want to have them side by side too much because they are never intended to be equals in any part of the film.

DevelopsI think that in terms of short films, my film develops a lot of the principles. As mentioned earlier, most short films don’t have story as such whereas I think mine does. Although it doesn’t necessarily introduce the characters, I have tried to make the situation very clear so that people don’t feel like they are missing anything. Also I think that there is a clear middle and then end which from my research I didn’t really see in most short films. I also found that a lot of short films, the shorts from Paris Je T’aime for example feature a lot of people both characters but also extras whereas I have opted to go for only two characters throughout the entirety of my film. I did this because I think that the story is quite complicated as it is so having more people that needed would just add to the confusion, also there wasn’t any need for more characters, I wanted the film to be purely about the relationship between these two characters.I think that the idea of the story being solely about two boys also develops the forms of most stalker films which involve just one boy and one girl, although there are films which involve “bromances” during my research I didn’t come across any film involving two men in this way. I worried at first about doing the film featuring just two boys due to various stereotypes and prejudices but decided to go ahead with it anyway.The final way that I think that I’ve developed the conventions of short films would be the rather sad tone to my film. All of the short films that I researched were cheerful and had a nice feel to them or at least a happy ending in the case of Pixar Shorts but I decided that I didn’t want my film to have a happy ending as I thought leaving it in the way I did made the end more powerful.

ChallengesI feel that as well as using and developing conventions within the two places that my product falls, I have also challenged them.For me the most notable thing about the film would be the lack of dialogue. Whilst carrying out my primary research I found that people were quite sceptical towards the idea of the film being silent but I decided to stick with it because I understand that there are a lot of misconceptions about silent films as a genre and because I knew that it would present an opportunity to put a lot of focus on the music which in a lot of ways would act in place of the dialogue. A lot of “stalker” films involve dialogue between the stalker and the victim as there is normally towards the end a conversation about why it was them being stalked among other things, I liked leaving the thought of the boy in my film just being picked at random, with no explanation of why he was targeted because once again this reiterates the authenticity which is the way to make a film effect it’s audience. Whilst researching my film I looked at the film Red Eye in which the first half of the film is the heroine and the villain talking to each other which gives the audience a better insight into the characters but that is something that I didn’t want to do.Another thing that I think goes against most films in this genre is the fact that I decided not to show the struggle between the two characters in the time between the boy entering the gate and waking up in the warehouse. I thought that it would be more effective to leave it up to the audiences imagination and because of the establishing shot in the next scene made it clear that it was later in the day so I wasn’t worried that people wouldn’t realised that quite some time had passed between the shots. Also as

I mentioned when talking about how I used the conventions, the audience know that he shouldn’t go through the gate so they already know what is going to happen so I thought it would be equally effective to leave it out especially as later on in the film the boy is seen chloroforming the other boy so with it being called “Reversal” I think that its implies that whatever the first boy does to the second has already been done to him previously.