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

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

Our thriller opening develops conventions of a real thriller in 6 main ways:

Characters:

Our main character challenges the stereotype of what a main character should portray in a thriller. In our film opening " Anniversary killer " the main character is very much the victim and is seen to be a average member of society, no different from you or i. However in many hollywood blockbuster  films we see that the main character almost plays the audience in the sense that he appears to be on the " good " side at the start, but as the film goes on we see that he tuns into the villain of the film, in films such as Skyfall (Mendes, 2012) we see that although the focus point is on Daniel Craig who plays James Bond the villain in the film "Silva" gets to know the audience very well and we get a better understanding of him without his game plan being given away. The other character that is seen in the flashback relates well to our target audience for the teen age range.

Music & Sound:

For our film opening " Anniversary Killer " we both conformed to traditional conventions of a thriller and went against conventions of a thriller opening. We didn't add any dialogue throughout the whole of the opening for many reasons, not only did it not fit into our thriller opening as a result we didn't want to force dialogue, moreover it would have been very hard to film in complete silence and still be able to hear what they were saying without the wind becoming too loud. In many thriller films there is dialogue as it lets the audience connect more with the characters and gain a better idea about them. Inside Man (Spike Lee,2006) we see the use of dialogue for a very strong affect, at the start we see him talking into the camera which as a audience gives us a insight into them as a character. Therefore as we didn't use any dialogue it allowed us to build more suspense through the use of our soundtrack that keeps you intrigued and interested which conforms to both the Uk independent films and the Hollywood blockbuster.

Camera shots & Angles:

In every film you watch there will be a huge variety of camera shots and angles to try and show different emotions and present different characters in certain ways. In our film we also used a range of different camera shots and angles. We felt that doing a close up would be more effective and add more suspense than just a full body shot, as it captures his facial expression and we gain more detail of how he feels through his initial reaction. If the camera shots are taken to a high level then you can get a feeling of going on a journey with the character. In Anniversary Killer we see the main character go on a path to his car through the car park.

Scenery:

I came up with the idea that we should pherpahs film in a car park because there is something about it that makes a car park a normal place but we could portray it to be a place of uncertainty which would add suspense. The first idea was that we filmed at night in the car park, however after audience feedback and some further thinking about if we should or shouldn't we decided not to because of the light being to much of a issue and we didn't want to ruin the film with it all being pitch black and not being able to see anything. There is a fine line between filming in the dark and adding a huge element on anticipation and adrenaline and then filming in complete darkness and being able to see nothing and then having nothing to edit. We didn't have any alternatives to filming in a car park however Tom and Liam really thought the idea would only compliment the thriller opening that we were going to produce later on down the line at the production stage.

Editing:
When it came to the editing stage Tom had already said that he wanted to take a lead role in this area, me and Liam were happy for him to do so as Tom had already used the editing software and although me and Liam were both comfortable with the software we felt Tom would be the best person out of the three of us. With Tom taking a leading role in the editing me and Liam still helped and gave our own opinion to try and improve our opening in any way possible. The editing process did not take as long as we thought because tom was very quick as was very familiar with what he was doing. We got audience feedback from the members of our class and from our teacher which also changed our editing process, it meant we had to go back and change some parts to make it look less like a trailer which meant we were only going to make our thriller opening better.

Lighting:

We only had one issue with lighting and that was we originally wanted to film in the car park at night. However with the advice of audience feedback and our teacher as she had previously seen groups try to film at night and it did not turn out well so this had a effect on our idea to film at night. In the end we didn't film at night as we didn't want to completely ruin our film opening. The final scene our of thriller opening where our main character is ready to drive off home before he gets attacked from behind, in this scene we pain close attention to our lighting as it was our most important scene in terms of our title " Anniversary Killer ", we wanted the light to be low so that you couldn't see the person in the back of the car when they put their hands round Cameron. Moreover we felt that if the lighting was low when he got in the car it would create a bit of suspicion as the lighting outside for the previous scene was normal day light. So in the 10 second gap between Cameron getting in the car and him being attacked from behind we hope that our audience might suspect something to always keep them thinking what will happen next?

Titles & Credits:
Our titles and credits are continuos and are throughout our film. We start with Vertigo films which is a UK independent Film company. They are known as both distribution and production company however we used them for our distribution company. After we have our production company which is Bath Road Productions. Following the title of our film Anniversary killer we have the smaller credits with less importance but still play a vital role in our film opening. These are actors names Cameron Matthews, Callum Gordon and the Names of Thomas Gilbert and Liam Nolan which are the producers and Directors of our film.

Our 9 Frames:
We selected 9 frames from our film opening and put them together, from looking at these 9 frames you should be able to get a good idea about what our film is about but it should still leave the audience wanting to know more and in theory should go to then watch the film.