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

real media products?

By George Back

Overall our film was mainly designed to fit into the categories of the typical thriller conventions in order to appeal to our audience as being attractively familiar to suit what we know the audience looks for in thrillers. It is therefore best that we didn’t use many countertypes or challenge the typical conventions. I will begin to discuss in more detail as the sections of our piece that used the conventions to have a greater impact on the audience.

Quick Summary

The pace of our product has been designed to be slow as it leads into the conference scene. This uses the typical thriller convention of a slow pace in order to build up the suspense of what is to come.

The music also suits the pace at the beginning of the film, this again fits the expected conventions of a thriller as you would expect the music to be slow and low in tone. The low beats on loop prevent the confusion of variety which occurs when too many instruments play simultaneously. This is why using a single beat on loop enables our audience to stay engaged without being distracted by the non-diegetic sound.

Pace

It is key to all thrillers that the narrative is both easy to follow but still incorporates the clever plot twists and the essential addition of the feeling of enigma as the audience questions themselves and the characters. Or piece does this well due to its simple complexity of the narrative. It’s continuity makes it easy to follow but once we reach the conference and find out about the ‘file’ it stimulates the audience to begin questioning what it is and why its having such an affect on the commissioner as he is willing to go to great lengths to find out where the journalist got it from.

Stereotypically it is expected that toward the end of thriller films we see the protagonist in a scene of peril, not always from the antagonist but it is to be expected and desired by the audience. From learning this from our research we ensured that we left our film on the exact enigma, which fits the thriller genre perfectly as we see our desperate antagonist interrogate our protagonist to then cut to black whilst pointing the gun directly at him.

Narrative

Protagonist – Occasionally Intelligent, calm, heroic, gets into the action. Antagonist – Criminal mastermind, sometimes abducts the

protagonist/protagonist’s assistant, often plays games with the antagonist.

These are the common archetypes for the main characters in the thriller genre and I feel that our main characters are very close to these depictions of their attributes. The protagonist is captured by the antagonist and he acts in a calm and heroic manner by saying about the file he found during the conference scene. This is also symbolic toward his attitude to getting straight into the action (as he is depicted to by the conventions). The antagonist also fits most of the conventions that are expected of him, being a criminal mastermind his corruption among the police force knows no bounds as he uses his power for his own benefit. There is however a slight countertype within our film – It is assumed, as found from our research, that the antagonist plays games with the protagonist, however, our piece portrays the opposite. Giving the protagonist the power to play games with the antagonist which he does throughout, refusing to give any information about the file or where he got it.

Character Archetypes

It is a common assumption for the protagonist and the antagonist to be male, although this is a fading trend as we begin to see more female protagonists such as in The Hunger Games and the Divergent series. Nonetheless we stuck to the expected conventions and used a males cast for the main characters. This justifies the conventions due to its appeal to a male audience. From our research it suggested that males are more likely to watch action-crime-thrillers than females and so we wanted to ensure that we follow the conventions to appeal to the majority of our audience (the males). By using males as the main characters it allows a male audience to create a deeper connection with the characters and therefore the narrative enhancing their experience of the film and increasing the effect of the suspense and plot enigmas.

Cast

We used camerawork that is common among the thriller genre such as focus pulls and point of view shots. These types of camera shots to immerse the audience and make them feel a deeper connection.

The use of other shots like the high and low angle shots are also very popular among thriller films as they further increase the effect of status and allow the film to portray the symbols of power and how they change as the film progresses.

Slow moving pans and stationary shots were our most common uses of the tripod in our camerawork, we felt that as thrillers have a slow pace we should reflect that in our filming and therefore didn’t include any shots that used a fast motion or any jump cuts. This was to keep the pace slows, just as the thriller genre is expected to be.

Camerawork