Foundation Portfolio Evaluation: Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products, i.e of film openings? 

To me the definition of a thriller film usually consists of a battle between the protagonist and the antagonist. The story will progress to show a chain of bad events that create continuous tension and suspense that collectively build to the climax of the film.  Using plot twists, cliffhangers, peaks and lulls; thrillers are created to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, with eventually the protagonist winning the battle between good and evil and fixing the disruption of the equilibrium.   

In order to adhere to this definition, a thriller film must stick to some conventions. Quick cuts; an editing technique we used during our film opening - this created tension as it kept the audience alert by forcing them to keep up with the fast paced action. It also helps fit a lot of information into a short amount of time, which is crucial during a two minute opening; you can see this during the voice over in Apparition as the shots help show the setting and establish the scene. 

 

Changes in the angle of shots; is a convention we stuck to as we used a variety of shots in our film opening as they make a scene more interesting for the audience watching it. My favourite angle used was a high angle shot, as it made character B a lot more frightening as they looked more powerful. This angle forces the audience to feel inferior as they are positioned at a lower angle. 
 

We challenged the conventions of thriller films for example costume. Often the antagonist wears dark clothing to blend into their surroundings; however we didn't, because we wanted to draw attention to the jeans of both the protagonist and antagonist - they're the same. This created suspense as the audience would realise that something unnatural is happening as they pay more attention and realise that there could be more to this antagonist that what they might think.

The range of main characters is another convention we didn't stick to, in most thriller films - the protagonists are a normally a large number of people. Having a larger group of people makes the audience feel at ease, they can relate to the group and find themselves identifying with different members of the group.


Inception is an example of a psychological thriller film with a group of more than one protagonist; the main characters include Dom, Arthur, Ariadne, Eames, Mr. Saito, Yusef and Robert Fischer.







We had only one protagonist and had the same person playing the antagonist. We decided to do this because introducing too many people in two minutes could become very confusing for the audience and we wanted to focus on the suspense. By taking this away and having only one person, the audience instantly feels more vulnerable and aware of their surroundings as they too feel alone.  

However, like our film opening; Buried - a thriller film with Ryan Reynolds; contains only himself as the main protagonist, the rest of the characters are just voices.