Evaluation 1- Jade

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

To allow our thriller opening to conform to the conventions of a thriller, we produced our own production and distribution company logos and we used real examples of big, popular companies such as 'Lionsgate' and '20th Century Fox'.

PRODUCTION COMPANIES

DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES 

OUR OWN LOGOS WE DESIGNED

 

When it came to the editing, we thought that it would be good to place our title at the end, however, on second consideration, we felt that it made our thriller opening look like a trailer. This was avoided and we moved our title nearer to the beginning.

Unlike other thriller film openings, we placed our title before any introduction to location, narrative or characters. We did this to correlate with our title('DiSoRiEnTaTiOn')to disorientate our audience and throw them off slightly. The use of a mixture of capital letters and lowercase letters to add to the disorientation of the first opening scenes. 

To create an atmosphere of uncertainty, we used flashbacks of the antagonist inside the house of the protagonist who is making her way home. We used black and white for the flashbacks to juxtapose with the shots of the real time of the protagonist making her journey home. An example of this would be when the protagonist (played by Natalia) is making her way to her bedroom and there are fast pace jump cuts of the antagonist (played by Katie) inside the protagonist's bedroom.Exemplar work we used for inspiration that incorporate flashbacks are 'Titanic', 'Saving Private Ryan', 'The Maze Runner' and 'The Conjouring'. 

For sound effects, we used clicking which is similar to sound effects used in Sinister when he watches the home-made films on the projector. We used this sound, incorporated with the black and white to show the past of the antagonist inside the house. It gives an eerie feel and makes the protagonist feel like she senses someone having been there previously which is something we tried to convey to the audience through the sound effects and black and white filter. However, although the protagonist may seem as if they sense the presence of the antagonist, she doesn't see it the way the audience does as the use of non-digetic sounds means that only the audience can hear it. This makes the audience feel more uncomfortable, as if in a theatre audience when the actor is being approached by a villian and the audience shout "look behind you". This makes the audience tense and on edge to see what will happen, creating the suspense needed for a thriller. 

Using a POV shot from the protagonist's eyes really helps the audience get a feel of the location and sets them up for the following scenes by building up suspense to see what happens inside. A film that follows the same similar idea is Sinister (Derrickson, 2012). 

This makes the audience feel as if they are apart of the action, watching it first hand. This is very key within thriller films to reel in the audience and keep them watching.