Evaluation Question 1 by Ollie and Sam

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

In a horror or psychological thriller film the conventions of opening sequences are credits with scary fonts and dark colours. In horror and psychological thrillers, the opening scene often dives straight into the action with a crime scene or a mysterious scene, such as the classic thriller 'Jaws'. This often creates enigma codes for the audience as psychological thrillers and a horror will often draw in the audience’s engagement and gives them questions they want answering. In comedy films, the opening sequence often begins by giving the audience a brief insight of what the characters are like, often emphasising their personalities. For example in 'The Inbetweeners 2' the characters are expressed to the audience as freaks with no friends when the turn up t a normal party wearing fancy dress. In the opening sequence you also hear all the characters personalities, which gives audiences first impressions on the characters.

What was conventional to a psychological thriller in our film?

The location we used was a dark attic. This is conventional to a psychological thriller because it is often where the psycho keeps their prisoner in hostage.

We used blood and wounds. This is conventional to a psychological thriller because directors often like using images to make the audience feel sympathetically towards the character, for example case 39 when the parents are burning her in the oven.

The choice of music we used was very gloomy and dark. We used this when the antagonist was following the 'princess and prize' home to emphasise the fact that something bad about to happen and to make it clear to the audience she is being followed. This is conventional because directors and composers often like to use scarcely and psychotic music in psychological thrillers to highlight the psycho or villains thoughts and feelings.

The camera shots we used were conventional to our genre of a psychological thriller. We used shots such as extreme close ups to highlight the victims wounds and bruises, and to create moral panic for the audience using a scary atmosphere. This is also used in classics such as the first 'Saw' film when the main character is stuck in the bathroom. 

The identity of the protagonist was not shown in the opening sequence. This is conventional because in psychological thriller films, the psycho tends not to be identified in the opening sequence to engage the audience and ensure they keep watching to find out the identity.

We started off with the title at the end of the opening sequence.

What was unconventional to a psychological thriller in our film?

We didn't show any violence towards the 'prize' kept in hostage. This is unconventional because in psychological thriller films, we normally see something happen to her in the opening scene. For example in 'Jaws' we see the girl get attacked and killed by the shark.

Showing jump cuts of the girl getting ready in the opening sequence is unconventional because it didn't really relate to the previous scene.

In a lot of psychological thriller films, they follow Todorovs narrative theory, starting with the Equilibrium before moving onto the disruption. However we challenge this theory by starting with the disruption and then moving to a flashback and going to the Equilibrium.

We used unconventional camera shots such as zoom. This is unconventional because jump cuts are normally used instead of them. However as we were using a phone we wanted to represent who was messaging whilst making it clear what the message was. 

The title was named at the end of the opening sequence rather than the start. This is unconventional because in psychological thrillers they present the title at the start. Instead, there is normally a black out before moving on to the next scene.