Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

Freya Bruce

Our film Released follows the basic conventions of the thriller genre, with a psychological sub genre. To portray this we used low key lighting and dark shots of Brighton. We used close ups of eyes to suggest a mystery of the character, again to relate to the thriller genre. Although we followed the basic conventions, in a sense of characters we challenged the genre as our main protagonist was female. We felt like this worked well with out opening title sequence because it was different but effective. Our main influence throughout the film was seven, This is because we liked the way it showed a psychological and crime sub genre mixed with thriller. The film one flu over the cuckoos nest also influenced us because of the mental hospital as the main setting. I think that Our opening title sequence conforms to the generic conventions of thriller as we have got an tension building heavy soundtrack throughout, with a mixture of radio cuts and echoing of conversations mixed into the sound. The film Mimic was another one of our influences because of the radio edit. When researching thrillers one of the main similarity that appeared in most thrillers was that it was set in an area with lots of people, for example hotels, schools, hospitals. We felt that buy using shots of Brighton mixed with the radio gave this effected to make people feel involved and therefore presenting some of the basic conventions of the thriller genre.

I think that the font we used also stuck to the conventions of the thriller genre, psychological in particular as it was san-serif giving a bold status to the titles. The contrast of black and white and different sized letters again portrays the psychological genre as the confusion represents a confused mind. We used a range of shots mainly sticking to the conventions of thriller for example close up of eyes and watching people in public without them knowing. However we did have a shot of our antagonist walking down the corridor, this may have challenged the conventions of the thriller genre as we revealed a character, however we kept it very low key lighting and faded other images over the top to still give it a scary effect. We didn’t use a wide range of costumes and props in our opening title sequence, however the ones we did use again stuck to the basic thriller genre conventions like keys, files and dark clothing.

I chose these screenshots to analyse and to represent our opening title sequence in my evaluation as I felt they showed the setting, effects and characters.

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This screenshot shows our setting and location. We chose to film under the pier as we felt it gave a rustic look. The jumpy and rough sea gave the effect of being rushed and noisy which we wanted to make the audience fell un eased. We put a darkish effect to make the pier seem more silhouette like, to portray mystery.

This screenshot shows a hint at our storyline, and relating to our title ‘released’. This is quite and important shot as it compliments the audio of ‘so you want me to release him?’. We filmed this over the shoulder of the character, as like seven, we didn’t want to show the characters in the opening title sequence. In our OTS we didn’t use may props, apart from these files and keys.

This is the first shot in our opening title sequence, we made it dark and high contrast on the colours in the shot as we wanted to set the atmosphere of the piece. This is also where the radio edit starts, we wanted the audience to feel connected so we used people walking around town to make it feel like a highly populated environment.

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This is a close up shot of our main protagonist, which we echoed throughout our title sequence. The way that the eyes are looking straight on into the camera gives the effect that the character is looking straight at you, creating a feel of a thriller film. In most of the sequences that we looked at close ups were heavily used as it makes the opening title sequence more personal. We Made the contrast higher giving shadows around the eyes.

This is a shot of the female antagonist walking to ‘release’ the penitent. While editing we edited over fades of different clips and didn’t focus of the face of the character as we wanted to create enigma and atmosphere. In most thrillers we looked at they use the idea of laying over different shots in opening title sequence, so we used this. In this walking shot we wanted to show a match on action, filming my feet and me walking and placing it together.

This is a shot looking down over a path walking down to the pier. We felt that by having the camera looking down it gave the impression that someone was watching you, which is used lots in thrillers to create tension and build suspense onto the audience. The lighting is very low because it was at night and we edited over a red light as the connotations of red is blood and can easily be related to thriller.

This Is our main title frame for our opening sequence. We chose to have our title on a black background rather than having it over some footage as we felt it looked more effective and we used the font old press as we liked the spray on effect. We started to add some classical music in the background of this shot as we felt it would ease into our film nicely.

This shot was an old wall in Brighton. We felt this was useful as it looks old and worn away. We thought this would work as subconsciously the audience put together the rustic settings and create the sense of the character being like that too. We liked the mixture of the white and dark as white is often thought as pure and juxtaposition of the rustic colours around it creates the psychological thriller that we wanted.

This again is the eye shot, but with an edit on. During editing when we felt that we were missing something and wanted to incorporate the eyes around the title sequence. We felt that to make this more interesting we would add different effects onto the eyes, to make one of the main focus points of the opening title sequence the mystery of the eyes.

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