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

Setting/Location

For setting and location I chose the first shot as it shows a close up of the house which we filmed in. This shot mainly shows the house and it shows the trees around it and the space to show isolation which links to out theme of a psychological thriller as the character is alone and there’s no one around incase of emergency. I also chose this shot as it could be perceived as a nice family home however the audience soon finds out that although a family lives there something twisted is going to happen and we wanted to shock the audience.

How Characters are Introduced

To show how the character is introduced I used the second shot as it shows an innocent and young woman. She doesn't’t look any different to the average normal person. This goes well with our chosen genre ‘Psychological thriller’ as sometimes you don’t always suspect that a certain person may be Psychopath or seriously ill and we worked towards making the audience to perceive the character as normal but leave a sense of mystery. This is a Medium shot of the main character Darcy walking towards the house we saw in the first shot.

Story and how opening scene sets it up.

I chose the third shot to show how the opening scene and how it sets up the story as we see a medium/close up of Darcy and the change we see from her acting normal and happy to seeing her tearing up and stabbing teddy's in anger. For the audience this is a turn and a point of realization that Darcy isn't what she was shown to be and creates curiosity of who she is? Why is she doing that? This then links to the theme of our genre. Most characters in Psychological thrillers have a character that is drawn to our attention because of the wonder of danger or knowing what they think and feel by their actions and I chose this shot because it shows this.

Title Font and Style

The font and style of the titles is shown best here in the fourth shot as it is against a black background so it is easier to see the writing. We decided to use a simple font so it would be easy to read and used a white outline so it was eye catching and clear to see and read. The main colour of the font was black, this was used to relate to the darkness of the theme of our film which was a psychological thriller.

Costume and Props

To show costume I used the fifth shot to show the costume of the character. When we put the ideas for the costume together we thought of what the occupation of our main character ‘Darcy’ was which was a cleaner, we researched what a normal daytime cleaner wears and came up with something but plain. The use of the cleaners uniform was also used as a disguise from what Darcy actually is and is a trick used in many psychological thrillers to mislead the audience into thinking that, that person isn't who you really think they are and keeps the audienes attention right from the start as there is a sense of mystery which is shown in Darcy’s later actions in the opening scene.

Genre and how the Opening scene suggests it.

To show the genre and how the opening scene suggests it I used the sixth shot as it shows the pictures of the children of the family who live there have been drawn on and destroyed by Darcy, this then leads to giving the audience the first of many indications that Darcy isn't who she is perceived as. This is used in many psychological thrillers like ‘shutter Island’ when little information about the main character is given to the audience often but in ways that trick the audience to not acknowledging it and typically it isn't until the end of the film when all the pieces of the film finally make sense and you then realize that you subconsciously knew all along. This shot shows that the opening is the first clue and give the feel of unease and abnormality.

Title of Film

The seventh shot shows the title of our film is ‘Silence’ this is because of many factors relating to Psychopaths and mental asylums are typical of a psychological thriller. Some of the factors include the following, ‘silence’ can relate to loneness a psychopath could feel, it also represents the silence of the halls and cells in the hospital. Silence also suggests a sense of fear which is related to how the characters feel and how the audience should feel. We used this font which we go from a website call Dafont and we chose this because it stands out and is very unusual and is very eye catching a strange and uses unusual patterns which relates to the mind of a psychopath in the sense that their minds arent normal as off to the average human and there are some significant differences between the mind of a normal person and a mentally ill psychopath.

Camera Work and Editing

To show the camera angles and editing we used when filming the opening scene I used the eighth shot as it shows Darcy from a low angle looking up which gives the audience a feel of control from Darcy and that she has the higher status or is a dangerous character and out attention is drawn to her eyes which brings our next focus and curiosity as to what she is looking at or what she is doing. Its is also a close up of Darcys face so all of our attention is on her and could leave the audience with the feeling that there was a significant purpose for our attention to be drawn to her and creates more mystery of her character which is common in pur chosen genre for out film, a psychological thriller.

Special Effects

To show the special effect we used in the opening scene I used the last shot which is shot nine. This was the best shot to show special effects because we changed the lighting to a darker colour and added a hint of red even though it isn’t noticeable nut we did this so that the light on Darcy's face was emphasized more and you can see it contrast with the darkness of the shot. This related to psychological thrillers like ‘seven’ and ‘ Shutter island’ because the lighting is quite dark to match that darkness of the psychopaths and how their minds are different to out and the darkness and horror of the cells and being isolated which can make you feel very dark inside