IN WHAT WAY DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR

CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA

PRODUCTS?

By Fatima Abdi Mohamed

FEATURES IN THRILLER/DRAMA FILMS!

• While conducting my research I had grasped knowledge about codes and conventions of thriller/drama genres since our film is going to based on those genres. In my research, I had found out that the most common codes and conventions amongst thriller/drama genre is that isolated setting. The reason why isolated setting are are used majority of the time is due to the atmosphere it builds and this intrigues the audience further in to the film. Other common features of thriller/drama codes and conventions involve: lots of tense music, diegetic sound of breathing and montage of shots in a fast pace, low key lighting, quick cuts, shadows, changes in the angle of shots, black and white shots, protagonist is in the mercy of the antagonist, mobile phones, alcohol and drugs. We have not really challenged the features of thriller/drama genre due to the fact that we were trying to attract people who liked the typical codes and conventions of thriller/drama genre.

TITLE • Our film is called ‘Offline’ and the film name helps the audience

have an idea on what our storyline contains and have the knowledge that some type of technology is involved. The dictionary definition of ‘Offline’ is ‘not controlled by or directly connected to a computer or the Internet’ and the audience can link the name of the film to the literally meaning of the word. Furthermore, there is an increasing trend of thriller/drama films where the name of the film clues the audience on the type of film they would be catching as the title and the plot of the film correlate together. Another insight I had developed while researching thriller/drama films is that fact that the film titles are made with only one word mostly, because it has more impact and suspense and the audience are more likely to remember it. Our tagline for our film is’ Offline is always a reality’, the reason we chose that tag line is the fact that the audience can be clued in on the storyline of the film and it has a lasting impact because it sounds sinister and thrilling.

LOCATIONS• The location we had chosen correlated with the storyboards that we

had chosen. The first location was Hammersmith Broadway, where the majority of the time is fully packed. This helped us conceal the antagonise well and make the audience indifferent to the situation at hand. The second location was a deserted ark and this fit in well with the codes and conventions of thriller/drama genre. Our third location was an abandoned alleyway and this another common feature of a thriller/drama film and it also follows the codes and conventions of a thriller/drama genre. Our last location is the protagonist house, where she acts distress and paranoid, tis is also a common theme of a thriller/drama genre. Most of the locations we chose links to the thriller/drama genre and the end result was for the audience to feel the suspense and tension building up in the atmosphere after each scene in each different location.

OPENING SCENE • Opening sequence in normal thriller/drama films either begin with a serine

scene where everything is normal or a scene where the drama starts of on a high note. Our film trailer begins with a sinister person standing in the shadow, then it continues in a 5 second flashback montage to the actual beginning of the film where the original first scene begins. The first scene consists with the main character Abigail talking to her friend Amanda on the phone while surfacing the internet. The opening sequence of the film portrays a normal life of a University student and that’s our aim. During the research period we had looked at many different types of trailers and the best trailers that stood out to us contained flash backs and montages. We had followed the codes and conventions of an opening sequence for thriller/drama genre by begin it slowly and escalating it gradually to build up tension

POSTER• Our film posters main feature is the eye of our antagonist

with the protagonist in the pupil. While conducting our research we found out that the best way to have a huge impact on the audience due to the film poster is to make it stand out and do something unique and we had achieved that. Most of the posters we had viewed had a slight trend going with colour schemes throughout the whole poster. Our film poster followed the colour scheme Black, Gold and White. All those three colours work well together making our film poster stand out. We had used the film poster ‘Gone’ as a template to where we were going to place the main character in our film poster. We had followed the codes and conventions of a poster which include: the film title, the tagline, an image, the release date, the credits and some review.

MAGAZINE • Our magazine design is inspired by other Empire magazines

hence the magazine company we went with in the end. The main colour scheme we used for our magazine is White, Red and the reason we chose theses' colours is because they are uniformed together and stand out against the black background. We had noticed that the magazine Empire normally follows two colour schemes because its easier to follow for the audience, rather than having a magazine cover where there the colour scheme is countless and too busy. The image on the front of our magazine cover will hold the audiences attention because if you look closely, there's more than one person on the front of the cover. The second persons face is covered and that challenges codes and conventions of a magazine since every featured person’s face needs to be visible. We had the normal codes and conventions of a magazine which involved: release dates, barcodes, features, images and taglines of our move.

TRAILER• W had tried to follow the codes and convention of

Thriller/drama genres while creating our trailer, which is why he had multiple montages and scenes where transitions like flash is used to make the trailer more dramatic and tense. We also had to follow codes and convention of trailers which included: montages, cuts of scenes, title, release date, tagline, credits of company names and music. Our trailer runs for 2 minutes and 36 seconds which also follows conventions of a trailer since its not too long. We had inspiration from other movie trailers like Paranoid and X-man Apocalypse since they used multiple montages and dramatic music.