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

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

Most thriller films the general conventions are mainly through creating different effects for the audience using things such as iconography, mis-en-scene, costumes, characters and many more. They also need to include the three main things that all thrillers need to include to help build the tension and keep the audience engaged within the film; they are - Suspense, Shock and Surprise. 
The most typical generic conventions to a thriller would be that a young blonde girl gets innocently murdered or tortured by the killer. We have seen this happen in many films such as, Saw, Paranormal Activity, Drag me to Hell, Physco and the Human Centipede. These were all very successful thriller films as there genre was very relatable for the audience. It made you think that bad things are always going to happen, when for example in Paranormal Activity when the clip slows down and the low key lighting occurs you know you have to prepare yourself for the worse; it as us at the edge of our seat.

Our thriller we compared it to Scream. This is because we have shown the murder weapon as being a knife with the hidden identity of the murderer like in Scream. The genre of the film is to scare people into thinking somebody is behind them and to warn people that wherever they may go something might happen, and this is what we had to make sure we included in our thriller.

We had many different conventions that we used in our opening scene of a thriller and we included these so that we could make our thriller as typically like one as possible, so that the audience will be enticed and intrigued to watch it. One of the first conventions used was iconography. The iconography used that was conventional to a thriller was a large knife. This is conventional to a thriller film as it would be your typical weapon used to murder innocent victims, and in our case the young boy. We know that this is typical to your thriller film as we see knifes used as murder weapons in films such as Scream and Saw. The knife adds tension and suspense as the audience do not know whether the knife is going to be used or whether it will be for threat. 

Another convention we used in our thriller was low key lighting. The low key lighting we used purposely to create chialoscuro, this is used for creating shadows. This is conventional to a thriller genre as the low key lighting creates  dark, eary and dark atmosphere which makes the audience feel tension within the film, and this therefore entices them to watch the film as they want to know what is going on. We have used this in our thriller so that we can make the thriller more conventional, as this would therefore be part of the cinematography elements of our thriller. This would also be stereotypical of a thriller as the characters can be more scared (whilst making the audience more scared) due to the low key lighting reducing how much they can see.


In thriller films, there usuqally is an antagonist and a protagonist; this can be two charcters or just one, and this can make the charcter have an unstabke emotional state resolving in the actions of them. In the thriler
In all thriller films, there is usually always a protagonist and an antagonist; whether this is two separate characters or simply one, such as in a psychological thriller where it is a battle between the characters mental and emotional state. In thrillers, the victim is stereotypically always a female who is oblivious to what is going on or is too gullible to do anything about it. It is important for the audience to relate to the victim so they will feel sorry for her, and so will feel the full effect of all the scenes. The victim therefore needs to be believable, and this can be achieved through certain aspects of mise-en-scene.       




Conventions of a thriller that we used?


Low key lighting
tEENAGED CHARCTER VICTIM
setting
costume