Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For AS media our task was to plan, shoot, produce and edit a 2 minute opening to a new thriller movie. A thriller is a villain driven plot whereby the antagonist presents obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. Thrillers tend to use suspense, tension and excitement as their main elements and they have a wide variety of sub-genres within the thriller genre such as what is displayed in the mind map below:

 

The first few minutes of a thriller are probably the most important. The audience need to be hooked so they are enticed to continue watching the rest of the movie, this is where they establish their initial views and opinions. The opening two minutes of a thriller should also include an establishing shot, title of the movie and also main credits such as main actors and director/producer. Furthermore the opening also has to fulfil the conventions of the thriller genre and the main conventions are as follows:

 

When researching thrillers I watched a number of openings and analysed how they successfully used conventions and hooked the audience. Conventions found in a thriller normally show an establishing shot of the setting, which typically gives the impression of being in a dangerous or a surreal location.

Opening Scene to Shutter Island

Although, The Butterfly Effect challenges this convention and sets the film in an everyday suburban neighbourhood. To help engage the audience thrillers normally have a range of camera shots, including extreme close ups and quick straight cuts which can make the viewer feel isolated, uncomfortable and scared for the characters wellbeing. This also demonstrates how the audience show an emotional connection and compassion for the protagonist in a thriller. This is why when we came to planning our own opening, we felt that challenging the conventions of a thriller and setting the scene in an everyday househould would not only be effective like The Butterfly Effect but would also relate back to the audience watching it making them feel like they have a connection with the characters and therefore wanting to watch more. We also were inspired by watching successful thriller productions such as The Bourne Identity/Supremacy and Shutter Island to incorporate the use of flashbacks.

 

Flashbacks are used as a device to show the audience visual information that they incorporate into screenplay any other way, it’s a technique that reveals information about the character and moves the story forward. The visual attributes of using flashbacks is impressive. Going back to The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne holds a gun to Nicky’s head and as he’s about to pull the trigger a flashback suddenly occurs, and we see a woman begging for her life in Russian –then back to present time. This blur of desperation, panic and fear is the style we tried to capture in our own thriller opening.

Here we see the establishing shot for our thriller, the tracking shot of the warehouse. The composition of the shot shows the golden mean and draws attention to the boxes and the vast expanse of empty floor. We also felt that this warehouse worked well, because of the red floor, which could be a representation of the bloodshed and danger here.

We continued on the tracking shot around the warehouse although it was not the main focus to reinforce the feeling of isolation. This shot is continuous until you see a low angle point of view shot of the bench and pictures/newspaper cuttings on the wall.