Evaluation - Question 1 - Sophie

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

In our project, we worked on using the stereotypical conventions of thriller to our best ability.
An aspect that we worked on specifically in order to intrigue the audience is enigma.
Our aim was to create a piece of film which was unpredictable and kept audiences on their feet from start to finish. We went about achieving this in a few ways. We purposely edited the establishing shots along with shot, fast paced clips of the women's feet running, this was in order to replicate shots from a chase scene, which contrasted well with the calm establishing shots of the setting. Once the audience had established that the women isn't being chased, but is on a run, followed a few mid shots & long shots of her running, we introduced a hallucinated section of editing where the audience could see through a point of view shot that she was hallucinating and feeling faint, again showing itin a way that the audience were not able to see her but just experience what she was, was in order to create enigma and mystery as to what was going on and where the story was going to go.

  

We decided early on in the planning process that we wanted to include random and edgy cross-cuts in order to make the audience feel uncomfortable and question what was going on, eg/ cobwebs, old machinery, dirt, rusty nails etc. We got initial inspiration for this kind of sequence, from the opening of the film 'SEVEN' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2gsEI34CE) which I analyzed as part of the pre-production planning. We liked the way the shots were very random so therefore kept the audience guessing however all still related to each other the audience were kept interested. The low key lighting of the shots in SEVEN meant that a dark, suspicious atmosphere is given off to the audience, which is something we also wanted to achieve.

 



We decided that the flashing shots needed to have some kind of relevance to the character's story rather than random shots to set the genre - hence we decided on a flash back that we has of a time when she was kidnapped and kept hostage (themes correlating with the genre). In addition, from that we decided that we wanted the shots to start off as random shots of machinery, cobwebs, nails etc but we wanted it to develop to extreme close ups of significant objects (the women's ring) and parts of the women being held hostage (heavy breathing lips, her naked foot on the dirty floor,) and finally to climax to an extremely shadowed close up of the mans face, half revealing him for the first time.
This technique worked well at keeping the enigma continuing through the film opening. 

 

In addition to the editing choices, we decided we wanted to have a restricted narrative for the opening, meaning that the audience knew little about the story and what was going on. We achieved this by revealing very little about who the characters were (especially during the flash back sequence, where shots consisted of extreme close ups of body parts, ie a foot or lips etc).

The sound side of our opening wasn't that strong. However, the music used against the flashback sequence worked well at creating suspense and enigma, with the tense orchestral music. 

Mise en scene
Setting: Both the settings we used were very stereotypical for a thriller piece. The rural, quiet woods which she was running in contrasted effectively with the dirty machinery room.
(screenshots of scenery)
Lighting: Low key lighting was used for the machinery room shots, which contrasted well with the morning sun light in the running sequence. Together the two contrasting lighting keys worked well to enhance to darkness of the flashbacks and therefore have a bigger impact on the audience.
Costume, Hair & Makeup: The costume of the kidnapper especially fitted in with the conventions of thriller. He was wearing all black, with a big coat on meaning you were unable to see his face, which again added enigma.