Question 1 of Evaluation

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

In the narrative we establish the plot before and after the title sequence which goes against some of the usual conventions where the plot may be established after a title sequence, like in North by Northwest directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

In our two minute opening sequence the plot is established with a significant event before the title sequence and then a complication afterwards – the passing out of the main character is the significant event while the death of the cousin is the complication.

Our film was designed to be linear but with events that would confuse the audience, as our film is a psychological thriller so it needs situations like this to be successful. Flash-backs may have added to the psychological confusion however, like in Shutter Island where Teddy Daniels experiences brief flashbacks to events before the time the main film is set.

With our camera angles, shot movement and positions of the camera we generally stayed with the norm, except in one shot where the camera is positioned far to the left of the character it should be focused on. This is something usually found in horror films, but they can and usually are incorporated into psychological thrillers to add a more tense atmosphere, as the space that is not occupied by another character could be invaded by something at any point, which in turn would cause the audience to jump. However we used it as a device to build the tension in the atmosphere which is something that is found often in the darker genres of film.  

With the continuity and editing, we did an okay job in terms of creating a smooth film – there weren’t many jumps in the final cut. The pacing and rhythm of our two minute opening was quite fast but it wasn’t choppy (at least not until the end, where for some reason our two minute opening didn’t render properly). 

In the background of our two minute opening, in the beginning, the diegetic sound of the opening of Cape Fear can be heard. We did this to try and subliminally translate to the audience that the film was a psychological thriller, like Cape Fear. It adds impact to the opening scene, which was something we wanted to achieve since our full film would have been designed to be fast paced. In the scenes before and after the title sequence, the sound heard is all diegetic. We did this to make the film seem more real in a way, to try and immerse the audience more. However, this could have been achieved more successfully through silence.

The ‘costumes’ used in the two minute film opening were all things that we owned ourselves. We were given different roles to play and we tried to show this through our clothing. The location was one of our group members’ houses, where most of the full film would have been set. This is not usual for a mainstream film – for it to be set in one specific location. Though, it is not completely unusual as films like 127 Hours and Harry Potter is (for the most part) set in one specific location.

The props used were all bought ourselves or they were things that we had on hand at the location.

The font used in the title sequence was bold and was a sans serif font. The size of the font was around 16, while the main title was around 36. We used an effect on Final Cut Express to add an effect to the font that would make it look more rough and distorted. 

In our two minute opening we didn’t have many pieces of iconography due to the fact that it’s difficult to do this with psychological thrillers at the beginning. Psychological thrillers are about building up the psychological aspects slowly, so we only got three pieces of iconography. One of these was the lighting – our film looked very dark and almost like it was shot in black and white even though it wasn’t (this can be linked to mise-en-scene too).

We also filmed a shot where there was a big amount of empty space next to one of the main characters. This is a typical convention seen in most horror and psychological thriller films as the empty space is supposed to make the audience wary of something that may or may not “jump in” or appear on screen.