Main Task- Evaluation

Question 1

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

I think our film uses the conventions of a psychological thriller with the type of music we chose. Most thriller films don’t have very complex music scores because they don’t want the music to take away from the dialogue. But because we have one bit of speech in ours, we didn’t have that issue. I think the music is good with the film because it has a slow pace that matches the edits of the shots. It slowly builds tension and gradually starts to speed up further into the opening. At one point it even peaks which is at the point when the baby starts to cry. So it fits in well with what is happening in the film as well. The starting notes are very deep and foreboding, which allows the audience to tell that the film isn’t going to be cheerful. The weather also does the same and pathetic fallacy is used to show us that the mood is very bleak and almost hopeless.

Our films uses a lot of different camera angles which thrillers tend to use, for example; close ups show the audience only what the director wants them to see. Our character is revealed by a series of shots that are very ambiguous. Close ups of her feet, hands and mouth start to unravel the identity of this person. She even says her name and the camera is focused on her mouth, but because the audience still hasnt seen her eyes, they still don't know who this person is. I think we develop the ideas of certain shots because we used some shots that are not typical for thriller films, such as; wide shots to reveal locations, high angle shots to make the audience feel safe, only to be shown low angle shots, so that the character walks past them. This would allow the audience to feel part of what is going on and make them uneasy.

I think our film challenges the conventions of a usual psychological thriller because it tends to be a male protagonist and we chose to have a female one. This could make the audience think that our main character is harmless when in fact she is a murderer. She looks like an average teenager which could create a sense of uneasiness because it shows the audience that anyone is capable of murder without seeming like they are.