EVALUATION – QUESTION ONE

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

My Product Typical Thriller/Horror Conventions

My Production – use, develop or challenge?

Comparison to Existing Products

Titling – colour, font and style

The typical conventions of a horror genre are that they are usually dark and representative colours so things like reds and blacks. The font is normally quite large and bold in an attempt to make it seems more imposing and as well as this there’s normally a very plain font.

In our film called saving grace we use white skinny letters that are in capitals and this is because we want to give the idea of innocence fading away and that’s why we make the letters fade out at the end of the shot to make it show this. This is mainly challenging conventions though.

Our film in comparison to others is pretty different and could be compared to very few film but a film like the shining would match it as it doesn’t fit with a lot of conventions as it uses blue skinny letters.

Camera Movement- pan, track, crab, crane

In the thriller genre they normally tend to do a lot of canted shots, close ups and panning shots and this is intended to cause a close relationship with the character whilst at the same time a mystery.

In our film we tend to stick to a lot of the conventions of thrillers with panning shots and close ups as well and this is ok because it singles the film out as a thriller.

Our film is very similar to a lot if the other films out there in this genre mainly because a lot of the shots that we used are ones used by all genres.

Framing a shotECU, CU, MS, LS, ELS

A lot of the shots that are used are close ups and or extra long shots and these are commonly used because it gives you the establishing shot and then the close up personal shot.

We mainly used a lot of long shots because we don’t want there to be an obvious connection with the character from the very beginning.

For our opening few minutes we do use a lot of wide shots and this is commonly used amongst other films so not to give away to much in the opening few minutes.

Camera AngleHigh, Low

A lot of different films tend to use a lot of different camera angles in an attempt to portray one feeling or another about a certain scene

We don’t use that many different camera angles in our film apart from the ones looking down on the pictures and this is because once again

There isn’t that many different films that don’t use that much of a wide range of angles and from

and or character and this can be played out in a number of different ways.

we don’t want the audience to have perceived a certain view of the main characters as we intend to bring that in later through the film.

the films that I have viewed none of them does and this stands our film out from the crowd.

Mise-en-Scene They would normally use more horror-based ideas like dangerous items and knives and a lot of dark and dingy scenes.

We used quite a lot of Mise-en-scene for instance the hooded jumper used by the main character develops the norm because it’s usually a man in the hooded jumper but we used a girl.

Things like scream also use hooded clothing but once again it is normally the man that would wear it.

Editing – jump cuts, match cuts, reverse shots, cutting rhythm

They would use a lot of jump cuts and maybe use a quick cutting rhythm that adds to the suspension of the film

We didn’t use that many different cuts as we used jump cuts a lot because we where using two totally different scenes and it was to distinguish between the 2 sections but at quite a slow pace. This follows a lot of the conventions but challenges them in some point to make it slower because we have a slower paced film

There are some slower edited psychological thrillers but most of them are quick paced to add tension.

Sound Low and tense music with deep melodies.

We used eerie and tense music as well as using a voice over at the beginning and this adds to the tension and with it being a biblical speech that the voice over is saying it adds to the idea of the religious feel to it. And this means that we challenged it.

There aren’t really another religious and eerie-based music in psychological thrillers.

Narrative Theory There is normally one person in the film who is

We also used the same narrative theory and

The orphan uses the idea of using a

the film who is seen as the ‘bad’ person and one or more who are seen as the ‘good’ people and its normally a conflict between the two of them.

character profile for our film or though we changed it somewhat as it was a girl who was the ‘baddy’ and this is opposed to the character normally played by the male role.

young girl as the ‘baddy’ rather than the other more stereo typical characters.