Question one

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

Overall Plot

The beginning of our thriller introduces a teenager girl coming home alone. As she enters the house she begins her daily routine; going upstairs, running a bath and relaxing. However, all is not the same as she encounters an out of the ordinary experience. A magazine flutters beneath her, which causes her to be startled and to close the window thinking this was the cause of the event. The girl carries on reading the magazine as she is waiting for her bath to be filled up. There is then a thump from the ceiling, which also startles her and causes her to look around curiously. The girl dismisses the sound and carries on as normally, however as the thump occurs again it causes her to react and go and investigate. As she is walking out of the room, she does not realise but the magazine flutters again, this time it is more suspicious as we see that all the windows are closed, so therefore wind can not be the cause of this. The girl creeps down the corridor fearing the worst. As she approaches the attack another bang occurs and causes her to grab the nearest object she can see, which is a hockey stick. The attack is of her concern so she pulls down the ladder and tip toes up, she reaches the top and screams and cuts out to the credits; leaving the audience in questioning and fear of the unknown.

Aims to the audience

Through the use of different varieties of camera angles, we have kept the viewers engaged and intrigued. We captivated the audience by creating a mysterious storyline and ensured we gave them a thrilling experience and a build up of tension through the use of; the music, lighting, short clips and quick transitions.

We considered including more dialogue into our opening however, We didn’t want to give too much away to the audience so we restricted our script. We thought the thriller music was a more subtle way of building tension rather than having people talking and creating a more casual and unprofessional atmosphere.

Opening Titles

We have used the same font as our thriller title. We ensured we used this font throughout so there was a continuous theme. We also ensured we used a different font to everyone else so ours was unique, so we discovered this font through browsing the internet to gain this uniqueness's. We named our production company ‘MGCT’ to keep it stylish and personal , gaining high establishment.

Shot used and why? High Long Angle shot- We started with this shot to introduce the audience to the setting. We filmed from above and captured the car entering the driveway. The shot was slightly unsteady to give a point of view shot of ‘something’ watching over the main protagonist. Medium Shot- A medium shot was used so the audience could see the surrounding scenery as well as the characters movements. We also specifically included the red lighting of the car to add to the thriller conventions of the representation of blood and danger. High Angle- A high angle shot was used again to reinforce the idea that someone is preying on the main character and implying she is of a lower status. Long Shot- We thought this shot was appropriate to use as it caught the darkness all around the actress from far away and as she approaches closer it makes the audience feel uneasy as they are unsure as to what the light is. Continuous Medium Shot- When the girl is in her room, we wanted to place the camera in the right position so that we can capture the girl doing all of the movements around her room. This is so that it makes a continuous flow to make it seem realistic. We avoided adding lots of editing to this section because we wanted to have a variety of editing between the scenes. Low Angle Shot- When we filmed the girl walking up to the attic, we knew that we would add fast pace editing from different angles to create variety. This shot was to create the feeling that the audience was watching a horrible event about to unveil, it reinforces the idea of the unknown. Close up Shot- The close up shot was filming the tap very closely and the feet slowly walking up the ladder.. This was used to build up tension because the audiences eye can only focus on the action taking place.

Sound used and why? • There is continuous sound from the beginning of the thriller, however it

stops and starts at significant moments, depending on what the girls actions is. For example, when she closes the window and the magazine flickering occurs the ‘diegetic’ sound stops. Selective sound is used instead off the background music to emphasis the action which is occurring.

• Despite the tap making a noise, we emphasised this by making the volume louder on those particular clips. From the volume being louder it builds up the tension more effectively. Also in contrast to the transition shots of the girl walking up the attack it is enhanced better.

• We needed to use a banging sound for when the girl hears a noise coming from above. However, the diagetic sound we used initially from a clap was not loud and effective enough, so we added in non diegetic sound to enhance the bang, giving the audience a fright.

Technology used and why? For our filming we used a Sony camera to capture our thriller opening. We

were able to keep steady shots by using a tripod and positioning it appropriately to get the right angles and shots.

We then imported our clips onto iMovie through a USB capable. Firstly we had a few problems transferring some of the footage from the camera on to the computer, as well as losing some of our clip on the school Macs. Therefore, we decided to use Tallula’s Mac Laptop so we could transfer the clips on and we could keep all of our work together. This meant that we were able to complete our editing a lot quicker and easier than we had previously tried to as we could access the laptop out of school hours.

For all of our editing when creating our thriller opening, we used iMovie, an editing software on Mac computers. This allowed us to add in transitions to make the shots flow consistently, we could remove sound off clips, we cut clips up and pasted them else where and placed non diegetic sounds over them to add to the effect of our thriller. The technology we used was very relevant and it helped us to create a smooth, well produced thriller. However, one of the problems we came across and could not help was the film quality which was poor.

Characters and LocationWe chose our character because she is a typical teenager, which fits into the stereotype we were looking for. When we researched other thrillers with similar beginnings, we thought that it would be a good idea to include a young teenage girl which our audience can relate to. We chose not to add more than one character to our storyline as we didn’t want to complicate the first two minutes of our opening.

We chose to film the opening of our thriller at one of our houses, so we had access to it at all times. We chose to set our thriller in an empty house because it meant that the girl was isolated, with the walls around her. We also wanted to film the teenager at a realistic place rather than somewhere people wouldn’t be able to relate to.