Evaluation - Question One

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

There are many different generic conventions that belong to each genre that makes it
imperative to consider when trying to produce your own successful opening thriller sequence. Some of the generic conventions that belong to the thriller genre is a potential narrative to scare you, dark and gloomy colours, low key lighting, an enigma and close-up shots. These conventions belong to every thriller film which portrays the film as part of the thriller genre and because they are all used effectively in order to scare you.
My thriller piece made use of all of these conventions focusing specifically on the use of an enigma and low key lighting. Such like successful thriller films "Sinister" and "The Strangers" an enigma is used as the antagonist is kept a mystery and unknown until the end of the film. Throughout the film the audience is kept unknown to who the killer may be but is given slight hints throughout in order for them to try and figure it out before the end of the film. However at the very end of the film the antagonist is revealed and it sometimes challenges the conventions as it has an unusual and unconventional antagonist which surprises the audience for example when the killer is a female or a child.
I similarly used this technique in my own thriller piece. I made the antagonist unknown to the audience to create a mysterious atmosphere and to build up tension. We used this specifically in our scene leading up to the reveal of the antagonist when the victim was slowly walking up to the back of the antagonist in a slow point of view shot. This built up tension as the audience were about to find out who the antagonist was and also left them wondering what they would do to the victim who revealed them. This is conventional as it makes it impossible for the audience to build relationships with the characters which makes them fear them instead of fear for them. I also used low key lighting. I used this in almost all of my scenes as it is conventional and effective but also fitted in with our setting and narrative of a dog being lost in a forest. I used this in our beginning scenes of a panning shot of the forest and a low angle shot of two of the characters walking through the forest calling for one of their lost dogs. The use of this technique in the beginning of our piece gave the audience an immediate sense of foreboding and helped them to understand that our film was part of the thriller genre.
The technique of low key lighting is also used in some of the most effective and successful thriller films such as "Halloween" and "The Woman In Black". Low key lighting is used in the "The Woman in Black" in one of the most famous scene for being scary. When Daniel Radcliff the main protagonist in the film is discovering about a new house which is supposedly haunted he is looking out of a dark grey gloomy window. After a couple of seconds a dark face with black hair quickly appears to scare you. The darkness of this scene gives the production a dual and forlorn aura and gives the audience a sense of foreboding as we expect the audience to associate the darkness and black and grey colours with negative thoughts and an automatic uncomfort.
The title of my thriller piece was "Devour". I decided with my group that this was an appropriate title for our film as it fits in with our inspiration and narrative of cannibalism. The word devour defines to engulf or eat up voraciously. We felt as though this described cannibalism very well and that it described an unpleasant action of the way something was being eaten and so it was therefore conventional to the thriller genre.
Overall I believe that my thriller production follows the conventions of the thriller genre as we have focused on interpreting the techniques in our piece in some way to ensure that the audience can understand and tell that our piece is a thriller sequence and also that it scares the audience in some way.