Neve's evaluation question 1

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

In our thriller opening sequence we use different forms and conventions of thriller films such as the use of a protagonist and an antagonist however in our thriller the antagonist is his schizophrenic personality that can take over, the main character is the protagonist. Thriller films usually have a storyline with crime in this is also part of our storyline whilst we tried to work it around mental health crime is still incorporated. We were inspired by shutter island, this gave us the idea of making our thriller about mental health.

Our use of mise en scene is similar to other thriller films, costume being scruffy  and the character looking ill was the desired look we were wanting, the idea of looking like he had done drugs was inspired by a character in shutter island. This character has red lined eyes like ours and is very pale whilst they have very different mental issues (she hasn’t done drugs) we thought the eyes were key in making him look the way we wanted. The costumes used in thrillers are key in showing the characters personality. (inspiration for character).

inspiration for our character.

Thriller films use off screen non diegetic eerie sounds to create suspense and a creepy feel, we have done his throughout to show his mental state and how he is feeling. There is also non diegetic chase music that suggests he is being chased, this is common in thriller films. we have challenged this by using a more upbeat non diegetic song that suggests hes on a mission (he's not!) rather than running away from himself.

children of men title 

our title 

It is common in thriller films to use black and white or dark colours to emphasise the darkness in the film and the thriller genre, our title sequence is white text on a black background this is similar to the thriller se7en however the title font of se7en, is jagged and probably creepier so if we were able to change this we would. The text pace is slow, this slow motion pace creates suspense for the audience, our thriller challenges this because our title sequence is a slow pace and creates a suspense. (screen shots above)

Minority report lighting 

 The lighting in thrillers is usually dark low key light to make the scene have a creepy feeling to it, our thriller is filmed in low key lighting in the evening (figure 4) to create the feeling that the character is doing something wrong and bad (escaping the hospital). lighting is dark in the film minority report which gives it a creepier feel that what going on is dark and evil. Our thriller challenges this along with other thrillers similar.

our lighting 

The narration we used is restricted we did this by not telling the audience what had happened previously in the characters life e.g we didn't say what illness he had, we implied it, we didn't say who killed the boy either, we had to be particularly careful in creating enigma because we didn't want to give the narrative away.our thriller challenges other thrillers that have created ambiguity and enigma in the audience, an example would be shutter island we are not told where the characters are going and to begin with there isn't any dialogue like ours there is just non diegetic sounds. This helps create ambiguity because the audience are having to connote what is happening rather than denote it. we wanted to create enigma which we have successfully achieved.

Tvetzan Todrovs narrative theory applies to our film in some part however not all of it.
equilibrium 
there isn't an obvious equilibrium in our film however it could be argues that the establishing shot by the hospital where a man walks out of the hospital, all people around are unaware of the main character escaping the hospital, for other characters this would be an equilibrium but not the audience as we have seen him escaping. 
disruption  
The disruption in our thriller is when the character has hallucination of the dead body, This is a disruption because the audience aren't aware of what he may have done until he sees the dead body by the tree.
realisation
the realisation is when the character remembers what he has done and begins to run away from the memories.
restored order 
restored order is similar to the realisation as him running away was him trying to restore normality and order to the situation.