EVALUATION: QUESTION 1 BY EMMA SPYRA

In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

STILL ONE: TITLES

We decided to make our titles very simple with a black backdrop and a simple white capitalised font which fades from black, in from the left. We thought this would make our opening look professional and like a ‘real’ media product. This is conventional because it is a inter-textual reference to other thriller openings, an example being Red Lights (2012) whose titles were very similar to ours, as seen to the right.

STILL TWO: CREDITS

For our titles we decided to use conventional shots of scenery relating to the subject with text, we felt this conveyed a ‘genre code’ as the typography is sparse and cold which, we observed conventions of other thriller openings and discovered that by having the main actors and directors at the beginning of the opening it acts as a hook to the audience as they may recognise the names.

STILL THREE

This shot shows a very conventional ‘over the shoulder’ shot that an audience would expect in a thriller or an opening. We can apply Barthes theory, the code of oppositions to our theme of a male stalker and a female victim which presents a very conventional protagonist and antagonist. By not revealing the ‘stalkers face, it connotes a sense of mystery as it is never revealed who the antagonist is.

STILL FOUR

The shot of the woman's eyes was used to present a typical thriller convention of a flashback, by having a close up of this we used it to represent realisation and the triggering of memories that provoked the flashback.The low key dark lighting is also a typical convention of a thriller genre, this conveys a sense of a darker more mysterious atmosphere. We also used this to convey to the audience that this scene was in the past. The typical setting of a woods is conventional in the Thriller genre as it has connotations of being away from safety and isolated, which is why we decided to call our opening ‘Isolate’.

STILL FIVE

We could apply Barthes theory of narrative codes to our opening which fits with the conventions of real media products, the ‘Mystery/Enigma Code’ also fits with our opening as it grabs the audiences attention/intrest by setting up an ‘enigma’ (the woman’s death) that would be resolved during the course of the narrative.By using blood in the opening, it presents a semic code to show the audience there will be gore throughout. This also informs the audience there will be scenes of violent nature.