Evaluation Question 1 - Thriller Conventions - Some Ideas...

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

To answer this question you are to produce a short film with a voiceover using Final Cut Pro X. You will need to import images from your film, and other films, on your timeline and script a voiceover.

The deadline for this is Friday 1st March.

You need to comment on all the different generic thriller conventions you have referenced and include references to other films, film directors and cinematographers that you have researched as part of your planning.

Here are the areas you need to reference (not in order of importance):

Locations./Mise en Scene - why have you chosen your specific location? What other Thrillers have used similar or different locations?

Costume and Props and Iconography - what other films use similar conventions? How do you signal that we are watching a Thriller using these elements of your film?

Music, Sound, SFX - where did you get your ideas from?

Themes of the Thriller - how did you conform to or play with traditional themes of the thriller.

Camera shots./angle/movement/positioning - where did you borrow ideas from - reference specific films and even specific shots.

Editing - cross-cutting/continuity editing - how did you set up enigmas in your Thriller using editing?

Genre - what generic conventions did you use?

Plot - where did you get your ideas from? What films? What current affairs stories?

Title - How did you come by the title of your film?

Tiles/fonts/graphics - you should have looked at a variety of film title sequences from the website 'The Art of the Title' - here's where you get to discuss your ideas and where they came from.

What amendments/changes have you made from your original plan that indicate you conform or challenging the generic conventions of the Thriller?

How does your lighting help conform or challenge the conventions of the Thriller?


Here is a copy of an evaluation by a student from two years ago:

http://alleynsmedia-desalis.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/1-in-what-ways-does-your-media-product.html

http://alleynsmedia-turnbull-walter.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/evaluation-question-1.html

Here is a video that highlights some of the Thriller conventions seen in the movie 'Memento':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK1_P4uZvR8

Thriller Conventions in 'The Dark Knight':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYxFo2tmkEo

Conventions of a Thriller - A Level Media:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsobNoNJzOc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLzEjk6IwpM

Showreel of Thriller Openings from Long Road VI Form College:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF0C030C9F405A86B

http://thrillerproject.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/thriller-conventions-1.html

Here's a short script from a student blog from a few years ago to give you some more ideas (it's not a top band response but it may help get you started):

When starting to look at different film genres in preparation for starting our group piece, we looked at different film genres and the conventions of each of those genres. For example rom-com would be very high key (lighting) and would usually had younger attractive people falling in love, with a struggle separating them. Then there was drama; using fast paced editing and lots of action to keep the audience enticed. Then we began to look at horror and thriller and as we did this we focussed deeper and deeper in on it, realising this is probably what we would want to choose for our own genre. And we did. The horror/thriller crossover share many common conventions such as a dark environment (often) with a main murderer, and a main victim (or possible victim). Some of the common themes of horror are death, victims, as well as the conventions of the production such as ominous music, and editing or creating a story which itself creates and enigma for the audience: leaving them guessing. Two examples of this are Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ (1960) as well as ‘The Shining’ (Kubrick, 1980) as well as many others. Both films holdback information until the end so the audience are more intrigued and, ultimately, more scared. We generally fit to these conventions of the horror thriller genre by having the classic characters of a ‘victim girl’ and a ‘nasty murderer’, as well as using enigmas, by not showing the murderers face until the third thing he says, and having him sign in at the very beginning as ‘Julie’ making audiences believe him to be a woman. We used iconography similar to that of other horror films. These included the location; a dirty cellar and the lighting; low key and shadowy. Another way we represented the genre of a horror/thriller is that we used the theme of stalking, which has been used is film such as ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ (Gillespie, 1997). We also used chilling music such as an ominous drone. In our audience feedback it showed that they all thought it was horror/thriller, so it shows that sticking to the conventions works well.

However to be more creative we didn’t stick rigidly to conventions, for example, we used a modern but still twisted storyline, involving the internet, and we also had two murderers which is uncommon in most horror films. We also used a modern piece of music which sounded like a dial-up internet connection to continue our particular theme. We stuck to most of the old forms and conventions of horror with modern twists to it, such as its modern context of meeting people over the internet. We didn’t choose to stick to Todorov’s classic narrative pattern of staring with an equilibrium, with a disruption that eventually gets resolved, because we felt it made more of an impact on the audience to start with disruption.
We also had to look at the conventions of an opening sequence in order to create a film that was accurate in content and in its production

Conventions include:

Introduction to key characters (Elle in Legally Blonde, Luketic 2001)

Titles throughout

Music (Shining)

Info on what is to come (Magdalene Sisters, Peter Mullen 2004)

Main themes of the film (killers obsessive record keeping in Seven, Fincher 1995)

Visual references to the title (pumpkins in Halloween, Carpernter 1978)

Sense of danger from the offset-only for horror (Seven starts with a dead body)

Symbolic/iconic images

We stuck to all these conventions I believe as we introduced our murderers (the girl was merely the first victim), we had titles throughout and music, introduced the main theme of the internet and gave an insight into what was to come. We have used many narrative techniques in our sequence such as editing it in real time, using cross-cutting, and a small ellipsis between bits in the conversation. Some of our action and enigmas codes include our montage sequence at the end, and the enigma is when you can hear the printer sound but are unsure as to who is printing it. We used the classic characters roles from horror films such as the victim, insignificant to the overall plot but just one to add to the body count. In our film she is a girl like most horror films including ‘Scream’ (Craven 1996). The overall style of our piece is very eerie, with close-up camera work to show the expressions of both murderer and victims face, be it scared or smug. Our sequence has continuity such as match-on-action and shot reverse shot, however breaks this by having a montage at the end.

Here's another response to give you some further ideas:

One of the main ways in which our media product defied conventions of similar media products - that is to say, British crime thrillers - was in the costumes of the characters. While most British crime thrillers such as Kidulthood often have hooded or unsavoury looking characters, we made our characters well dressed, one of them wearing a suit and the others dressed fairly inconspicuously. Through this, we hoped to give our characters a more unpredictable edge and not make them caricatures of British street criminals.

We also decided to make our opening rather slow-paced and use no shaky camera motion for it. This is unlike other thriller openings we studied such as Collateral or London to Brighton, and we chose to shoot the opening in this way to establish the characters and setting rather than put the audience into the action, as we felt that our film would be more of a slow-burn character piece. This meant that we often focused on the main character in between scenes of shot progression such as when he meets the two other men and begins following the girl. This reminded me of the film No Country For Old Men, which focuses as much on the behaviour and actions of the main characters than the general crime story it is based around.

For the graphics, we decided to go for a font called Bank Gothic - this font has been used in many films and TV shows, such as 24, The International and X Men.

We were influenced by some other more character based crime dramas for our opening, notably the films Drive and Heat in terms of cinematography, location and costume. Drive is noticeable for its lack of handheld cameras and slow-paced cinematography, while Heat opens on the Los Angeles MTA and uses several establishing shots - we were originally going to have our film set on the London DLR though could not. We did, however, use several establishing shots of the location in the way that Heat did.

It can be seen here how the cinematography of Heat is atmospheric and consists of slow and steady cinematography which our film also had elements of.

The main characters in Heat and Drive are also dressed fairly inconspicuously when we first meet them: Robert De Niro's character in Heat in the opening is in fact dressed in disguise as an ambulance driver, while Ryan Gosling's character in Drive wears a simple satin jacket and jeans.

We did, however, not want to make our characters seem totally inconspicuous as we wanted to also build a mounting sense of mystery with regard to the story. Drive also influenced us directly in this aspect as we had our character wear leather gloves identical to those that the main character in Drive wears. In this context, these are particularly suspicious given that the character is not a driver.

One trope present in many crime films of a similar budget and setting to ours, however, was having a female character killed or attacked. This is often more surprising than killing off a less innocent looking male character and can be used to put the audience on the edge of their seat. We decided to make the character getting killed female as it demonstrated the dangerous nature of our possibly sociopathic main character.