CR-Evaluation 1

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

Whilst planning our film opening we researched the common techniques used in thriller films, these involved low lighting, eerie music and bold typography which shares similarities to those in Shooter (Fuqua 2007). In our audience research we found that the target audience held these conventions highly amongst the thriller genre. In our production we aimed to fulfil the majority of these expectations.

Our film opening is conventional because our titles used a bold typography and a classic transmission in the thriller genre, our plot as well involved a number of people being abducted by an unknown force. Some of our editing included very close, quick cuts quite common in thriller movies. Our location didn't particularly relate to those normally associated with thrillers because they are very public and not very extraordinary. We tried to keep the lighting within the expectations of the target audience, with shoots occurring during mid mornings and late afternoons. Quite often in thriller films there is a large variance in camera angles, and we tried to mimic this in our production. Some examples are featured below.

Whilst planning our film opening we both decided to keep the protagonist in a basic costume as well as all of our actors/ characters to show that the abductees are all regular people being taken to connotate the inability to predict what the abductor's character and plans are adding to the mystery of the film. When shooting we had to keep our actors in the same costume in order for well presented continuative editing. This involved in a lot of communication to be made between ourselves and the actors otherwise we would have had to reshoot or postpone the shoot.

The characters included in our film opening have not been fully developed because this is important in maintaining the level of mystery in the film opening, and to develop all of the characters featured in the opening sequence would have taken us over the two minute limit for very little storyline. The use of props in the film were used to emphasise the random set of occurrences such as the skateboard without a skater and the cuddly toy without its owner, this also contributes to the mystery behind the disappearances.

 The soundtrack was fairly easy to produce replicating those associated with other thriller films, we used a selection of music/ tunes that were available on the computer system, we also produced our own novelty radio broadcast that worked really well and contributes to the story of the film. We used a fairly eerie theme throughout our film with interruptions of a horrible screech in sync with the white flash on the visual which associated itself with the disappearance of various people which helps the audience determine what has happened. The soundtrack was a mixture of melody and sound effects which was underlying the diagetic sound, and for the sound effects they were given priority of the sound because it is a major factor in the film opening.

Overall our media product uses and in some places develops conventions found in the film industry.