Question 1

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

The title of our film:

After a lot of changes in regards to the name of the film, we decided to call our film ‘Shutdown’. We were influenced by other films in the psychological thriller genre such as ‘Se7en’ and ‘Frozen’. The names of these films are only one word. They give us a little insight as to what the film is about (Frozen more than Se7en) without giving much away, which seemed typical of films in this genre. After watching the openings of both films we discovered that we learn minimal information about the film from the title. ‘Frozen’ appears on a black screen in white writing in a plain font. ‘Se7en’ appears on the screen many times, in a small weird type font and in big bold white writing. Our film was influenced by this because we decided to combine ideas from both titles to create effect. We used the font OCTIN SPRAYPAINT and put the title in the top left corner of the screen. The writing was also white. The black background seems to be a motif with films in this genre which shows our film is similar to a ‘real product’.

Mise-en-scene in thrillers usually consists of the character performance being quite mysterious and dark. Moreover the lighting used is usually dim, creating an even more unclear and complex atmosphere. We have trialled this in our film, in order to follow the main conventions of thriller films. We used dim LED lights when recording our film in order to create that suspenseful atmosphere that is apparent in most thriller films. Over 2/3 of our whole footage is shot in a dark room, with a dim light. This was effective because it made the whole film look real. One thing that didn’t necessarily follow the conventions of mise-en-scene in thrillers was the costume choice. We decided to keep the actors in plain clothes rather than make them ripped or tatty as you’d find in many other thrillers.

We used a lot of non-diegetic sound and special fx in our film opening. For example, we used a voiceover to create effect in the beginning and middle of our opening. We thought it would be effective to add this because it helps people understand the narrative of the story a bit more. We added music throughout the whole of the opening because it set the mood of the rest of the opening. In terms of editing, we decided the speed at which we edited the shots would be moderate rather than too quick or too slow. In terms of the two similar films ‘Se7en’ and ‘Frozen’ the speed of the shots that we edited were in the middle. We also edited our credits at the same time as the film was rolling to save time. This was similar to both films which furthered the realism.

This evaluation question was completed by my group member - Angelique Mcgillivary