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

Thrillers ( Summary Edition)Over the past few months while working on reaching

the brief objective by creating our opening sequence, being able to have created our final project as a group has resulted into various research into the Thriller genre. Here is a few facts and a summary of what the ‘Thriller’ genre is all about.

• The Genre is a film, literature and TV production that specialise in using tension, suspense and excitement as its main aspects.

• There are many sub- genres of thriller but main ones include, comedy, conspiracy, crime, erotic, legal, political, psychological, horror, spy and supernatural.

• Thriller are mostly created to stimulate feelings from the audience , such as giving them high levels of anticipation, uncertainty , terror and surprise.

• The genre plot is mostly focused on the villain who creates obstacles the protagonist tries to overcome.

Thrillers ( Summary Edition) Continued

• Literacy devices such as cliff hangers and plot twits are what mostly create a thriller.

• Non diegetic music mostly includes orchestral music, mostly from the string section who create high pitched and minor sounds which create tense and gripping moods to the thriller scenes.

• Diegetic sounds include loads of ambient sounds such as rustling, thunder, creaks and groans of objects. These sounds are used especially during ‘Silent’ moments where characters are mostly alone or trapped somewhere unknown.

• Technical codes are mostly presented through cinematography shots which are vary but are mostly extreme close up shots of the characters face as by catching the facial expression helps the audience to engage more with the character through the feeling they express such as fear or curiosity. Also lighting is normally low-key or back lighting to create suspense or mystery.

• Mise- en-scen usually includes locations such as abandoned houses or haunted areas or secluded areas. Make and props depending on the particular sub genre relate to the character sand the theme for example if it were a horror thriller, blood and dark clothing would be used frequently.

Inspiration (Overall)

After gaining knowledge about the thriller genre, as a group we decided to merge a few thriller sub genres to the creation of our opening sequence. We choose to mix horror with mystery and crime and by looking at videos clips on YouTube, got inspired by clips to create our plot for our opening sequence 'Dead End'. The plot for our opening sequence simplified, is based on the idea of pranks turned into harmful, dangerous reality. A specific prank we selected as a main idea was the 'clown prank'. The prank centers around a clown who is caught crushing a persons 'fake head' with a hammer then chases after the by standers who caught him in the act. By looking this clip we were able to gather our own ideas on a prank which could tie in all of our thriller sub-genres and be able to produce the codes and conventions a thriller uses.

So? How was our sequence developed.

So? How was our sequence developed (Continued)

• To make sure our opening sequence matched the techniques of how a ‘Thriller’ film is produced we decide to include various extreme close ups and close up’s of our characters, so that we were able to catch each raw emotion of fear and confusion. Also mid shots were used to the show the forest like surrounding ( location) and the characters as they interacted and their body language as the action took place.

• We also used our editing skills to show the two different points of view. One from our group walking through the park ( victims) and the attacker ( the villain). Here we were able to build suspense by cross cutting from one view from the character Sarah and her group of friends ,to the view of the unknown attacker who was following them. The edits were also very fast paced when it got closer to the attack, this linking to the idea of anticipation increasing as the audience watch to see if she will get attacked. Fade and blur transitions were used as effects representing the uneasy feeling of the characters. We included grey scale effect to our opening sequence changing the colour the original colour of our piece to a greyish haze. This helped us create more of a tense feeling as the colour was very gloomy and dull.

• For our sound elements we used both diegetic and non diegetic sound. Ambient sounds included the rustling of the bushes and leaves, light wind whispers and tweeting of birds. Our diegetic sounds included laughter and dialogue between the group of friends. These two sound aspects were however kept to a minimum as we more focused on the non diegetic music that played in the background. The music starts off very light and crescendos to the peak moment of where Sarah screams and is taken away by the attacker. This helped build up to the climax as the orchestral string and horn sound play in minor keys and sound very distorted, adding a very eerie mysterious vibe to the opening sequence.

• All these elements link to what a thriller film requires, however we decided to add our own unique plot twist by having a news report at the end who announces the disappearance and the fate of Sarah instead of her friends who have escaped. Which leaves a mystery of what happened to the friends, and if they all got away safely.

So? How was our sequence developed (Part 3)