IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF

REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Marcia Rumsey

Most sound in psychological thrillers seemed to be non-diegetic. The music we used is disjointed and dramatic. We also added sound effects which made our music similar to the music used in the film

Se7en. However we went against the common convention of having a voice over which is used in

The Secret Window and The Prestige.

MUSIC

For our credits we used white font in the style of a typewriter on a black background. We then added

an effect to make it shaky and thus adding tension. This style is very similar to the credits in Se7en, the only difference being the font used

in Se7en is more like a handwritten font.

TYPOGRAPHY

Credits in Se7enCredits in our opening

Barthes theory stated that one narrative code used in the media is hermeneutic codes. This means the

audience is presented with enigmas and ask questions. In all the openings of psychological thrillers we looked at, a common convention that occurred was the use of hermeneutic codes. In our opening we have many hermeneutic codes. The most obvious question being asked is “Why are they

playing Russian Roulette?”

NARRATIVE

A common convention is to not have a physical weapon, the idea being the killers mind is the weapon. However in our piece we had a gun which features heavily in our opening.

Our set was a dark room and the actually location was ambiguous. However in the openings we looked at you can see the location although they are dark still. For the

costume of the male he was wearing a suit which is similar to the costume of the protagonist in Memento.

MISE EN SCÈNE

Our lighting is low key and sometimes chiaroscuro. At most of the openings we looked at low key

lighting was used, especially in Se7en and The Secret Window. Therefore most of our shots use low key lighting and some contrast with bright light

on the subject yet dark light for the background.

LIGHTING

In our opening we added effects to make our piece more distorted. For example we used a rewind

effect or some shots to disorientate the viewer. This is similar to the opening of Memento which is all in reverse. We also added an effect to make some shots bad quality and some shots not in order. This is seen in many psychological

thrillers, the aim being to confuse the viewer.

EFFECTS