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

The main conventions of a thriller:

The thriller genre exists in  literature, film, video gaming and TV programmes. It is normally used to create tension, suspension and excitement. Thriller films dramatically change the viewer’s mood by making them more anxious, heightening suspense, terrifying them and growing their anticipation. Fight/chase scenes are very common in thriller films as well as the ‘cover-up’ of important information. Thrillers range from crimes e.g. kidnappings to mystery e.g. investigations. A thriller normally involves the audience being on ‘the edge of their seats’ due to climax built up during the film, programme, etc. Tension is usually created by the character(s) being in some sort of danger, perhaps leading towards a death or a crime being committed to build the danger.  

The dictionary’s definition of ‘Thriller’ is;

“Exciting or sensational story, play, etc. Involving crime or espionage (spying/spies)”

In thriller films there are certain conventions which are expected to be used such as typical camera shots, editing techniques, mise-en-scene, sound, sound effects and narrative. At the beginning of a film it needs to make the audience want to carry on watching, so the way the opening is put together is important as it is almost the decider for the viewer of whether the film is good enough to carry on watching.

The main camera shots that are usually used in thriller openings are;

- Close ups/ Extreme Close ups these are used to show facial expressions, reactions and perhaps to focus on something important.

- Long shots/Extreme Long shots these are used to show the location and to set the scene.

Editing techniques that are likely to be used are;

-Transitions to move from clip to clip, this may build tension.

-In thrillers the transitions that are usually seen are slow passed ones. These may be cross dissolves or blurs as they also help to make the piece tenser; they also help to blend the clips together to make them smoother.

The use of mise-en-scene is important, it is used to;

-Set the atmosphere, most thrillers are tense and mysterious.

-Set the scene, usually abandoned houses or somewhere where there isn’t many people around.

The usual type of sound used it;

- Either a slowed paced, monotone piece making the piece mysterious, tense and almost creepy.

-However, it may be upbeat and at a fast pace making it more action packed and quick.

-Also sound effects that may be used can be screams, heart beats, breathing making it tense.

The opening to The Bourne Identity, used a variety of camera shots, and mainly establishing shots so the scene was set for the audience, characters were also introduced. The scene used is unique compared to most thrillers as it begins on a ship; however the weather makes the piece more tense. To help create the weather, sound effects are used such as wind, thunder, creaking of doors and waves. Throughout the opening the music builds up, it starts at a slow pace but the tension is built up quickly as the music suddenly speeds up to create a dramatic effect, once the music has built up more sound effects of thunder and wind are used, adding more suspense to the piece.  

In class we studied the opening to No Country For Old Men;

 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kqoJevTIIQ) this really inspired me and Emily in producing our piece. We really liked the slow pace throughout the opening and the way it built tension and suspense. This really influenced us in the way we put ours together; ours is very slow and creates huge tension. The opening to No Country For Old Men is very unconventional as it doesn’t fit the thriller conventions such as the camera shots such as close ups or extreme close ups. The opening also doesn’t use the obvious location, it is set in a desert which is usually seen as a positive place rather than a negative which it is expressed as in this film. We also liked the variety and wide range of location shots, we also tried to doing this in our piece by using many locations shots, long shots as well as close-ups, this meant the scene and atmosphere was set and the audience were able to create an image in their head. We were also influence by the opening to ‘The Strangers’, the use of slow pace music which stayed the same throughout the piece, made it stick in your head and made you feel tense, we wanted our audience to have the same feeling. So this helped us to decide on the choice of music.                               This is the music which influence us from 'The Strangers'.

The two images on the left are from No Country For Old Men as you can see some of our shots are similar to our piece. Not only did we use a variety of location shots, but also many landscape shots and we also included a sunrise.

In our piece we use a variety of camera shots. We use close ups throughout the piece, which helped to show emotion and helped the audience to relate their feelings with the characters. We also used close ups when shooting location shots, this gave the audience more of a feeling of the set. Long shots were also used to show the location, we also zoomed in and out on certain parts of location, usually slowly making the piece tense.

One camera shot is the pan used at the end. We panned along the body this shows sadness and makes the audience really think about what happened. We chose to use an almost abandoned barn, which featured farming equipment. Many psychological thrillers use abandoned locations so our scene fitted perfectly. As the location was surrounded by fields this helped show that is was in the middle of nowhere and no one was around. We also filmed a sunrise to show passing of time throughout the titles this was also filmed in an field area. Throughout the piece we used the same sound track, it was a simple piece but still very effective. It had a slow pace to it and at some points an almost crackling sound, which helped add tension; we think the music really worked with our piece as our opening flows at a very slow pace. The only other sound used in the piece is the girls scream, we were able to use the audio from the video and it worked really well, we also repeated the scream at the end when the girl has gone. We used many transitions to move from clip to clip, we used blurs to make the movement more smooth. We also used cross dissolve which worked really well especially in our titles; we really liked the outcome of using cross dissolve in our piece. This helped our clips flow from one to another it also made our piece more tense due to the slow pace. The transition from the metal bars to the hands gives suspense it represents her being trapped. Our titles were our strongest part, the use of sunrise and leaves help to represent the location as well time passing on (sunrise). We believe that in any opening to any film the titles are extremely important so we wanted to make sure our titles played a big part in our piece. Finally, the title appears at the end, a cross dissolve is used to combine the title in with the body before blurring out again.