1) In what ways does the media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

By Lewis Brookes

• Continuity was observed thoroughly by us both to ensure actions were matched and overall increase the fluidity of the film. After viewing many projects from other colleges on YouTube we noticed films that failed in some aspects of continuity and thus having a negative impact on the film and viewing pleasure; therefore motivating us to ensure our film didn’t fail on the same aspect.

• Using the HD camera we were able to take care with continuity by making sure it was in the same format. However, we came across the difficulty that part of the filming was in a standard definition format rather than a high definition format therefore we had to re-film the entire scene. We came across complications such as keeping the camera level and steady for over the shoulder shots. Also match on action and reverse shot, but careful planning and consideration allowed us to find the appropriate camera positions which obeyed the 180 degree rule with these two shots.

• Within the editing phase we came across other difficulties, such as the match on action not entirely matching in different shots. We overcame this by use of either cross-cutting or editing that allowed for continuity to be in place. An example is in the film, the character Andrew kneels down but in another shot he doesn’t kneel down far enough, this was rectified by simple editing.

• We also had to take notice of sound continuity, we hadn’t paid as clear attention to begin with and there was often‘ crackling’ and background noises which interfered with the continuity. However, through editing we managed to solve this problem, replacing bad audio with audio that worked. Also, there was originally noticeable changes in audio i.e. soundtrack. This was easily solved by using filters such as fades in and out, this made the transition much more smooth and wasn’t too obvious. Also we cut different shots in time with the beat of the audio in the office scene to make the transition smooth.

• There were many ideas of a film originally, but we made a joint decision to choose a thriller. However, we were still left with a plot and whether we were going to choose a hybrid of a thriller or a sub-genre of thriller. We analysed many films and decided psychological thriller would be best, therefore we researched what made a psychological what it is. The dark mysterious character was influenced by characters used in other films i.e. Jon Doe from Se7en and Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. I was interested to create a character similar to Patrick Bateman after watching American Psycho and seeing his characteristics. However, it was difficult to replicate a character such as him in five minutes and keep it original.

• We used elements such as Andrew not knowing everything that was going on which is a common convention of psychological thrillers and there were other uses such as crime and murder. However, to make it unique we gave Andrew a characteristic of OCD and that he was being drugged by his wife all along and that it was in fact she who was committing the murders. We used tension which is associated with thrillers to give it an exciting edge and the narrative was quite dark, but we used it minimally to ensure the audience didn’t guess the twist in the end.

• We deliberately subverted expectations of the film; the film was built up to imply that Andrew was the dominant character and the killer; however we had a twist where Maria was in fact the killer. We also gave a more bouncy relaxed soundtrack, when Andrew is at work to play with the genre s code and intentionally lower some tension however we did this to show Andrew's frustration as the music got louder and quicker, with close-ups of his anger. Then we quickly built back up to the tension with the second killing straight after to thrill and shock the audience.

• We can apply Richard Dyer’s theory of entertainment and Utopia to our film. Dyer explained that if your life is not ideal then a film can take you away from this and place you temporarily in‘ Utopia’. ‘Intensity’ is a feature of this theory, in our film we use a build of tension and action i.e. the killings and fast editing that creates an intense atmosphere. If the audience feel that there life is boring/mundane, watching our film will temporarily allow them to feel excitement. Initially the audience may feel contempt towards the character of Andrew and would think he is perhaps sociopath, however once they find out the truth of his character they may feel sympathy towards him.

• Also the audience will get pleasure by scopophilia meaning 'love of looking' by Laura Mulvey's pleasure and narrative theory. Our audience will be interested to discover someone else’s life from there perspective, in particular Andrew's. To achieve this we created voice over narration to give the audience a secret glimpse of what goes off in his mind and allows them to interact within his life. We are confident we have achieved this with the different types of mise-en-scene presented such as dark clouds and clothing, eerie music and dialogue, a variation of shots with moody lighting and the shocking suspense at the end of the film.

• Though we feel we have an original idea, it would be false to suggest there were no influences from other films. The voiceover for Andrew was influenced by the character of Alex from The Clockwork Orange; we used ideas/thoughts of Andrew that were comparative to the character of Alex. There were techniques i.e. camera techniques that were likely to have been subconsciously influenced from many other films like Hide and Seek (2005) with close-ups being the key to a psychological thriller. The writing in the diary was influenced by the opening credits of the Se7en, we felt that the jittery text effects and writing made an effective title sequence and so used elements from this film. However despite of these challenging conventions we have developed our own original ideas and used these to create a gripping genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S32RP5SnEM&feature=fvst

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