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

Here are the notes I was referring to whilst creating this video-

Conventions of a thriller-

Suspense
Low key lighting
Tension music
Different angled shots
Variation of visual effects to keep the audience guessing

Conventions of an opening scene-

Titles
Unknown
Not giving much away
2 minutes’ long

I believe I kept suspense throughout the whole opening scene. Different elements contributed to the overall suspense such as the flashing images, sound effects and backing music.

The low key lighting in some parts of my media product kept the whole scene looking eerie and suspicious. Although saying this, some of my opening scene was filmed in higher key lighting. This challenges typical thrillers because most of them like to keep the whole film quite dark and spooky. I don’t think this took away from the suspense of the opening scene because other elements contributed to the suspense.

The music throughout the opening scene builds a lot of suspense as it is supposed to. Typically, thriller films have a lot of quiet background noise with the occasional change or extra add in of audio to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. I believe we achieved this by having a continuous beat throughout the entirety of the scene as well as other added effects too.

The variation of different shots is typical of a thriller so this is why we mimicked this in our final piece. Changing the angle of the shots and switching from one to another means that the audience is always guessing what is going to happen next. Quickly switching from between angles throws the audience off looking at one thing for too long with is what is required.

There is usually a male protagonist in thriller films so Millie and I took this element and used it in ours. We dressed George, the male character, in an all-black outfit to make him look creepy and mysterious. On the other hand, we dressed Amy, the female character, in girly clothes to make her look sweet and innocent just as most victims are portrayed in thrillers.