In what way does your media productuse, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My film was meant to be a thriller the genre being a mix between mystery and crime. I feel that one can tell it is meant to be an opening of a film due to the ‘red goldfish productions presents’ and the credits that roll in at the beginning, however it does not have a production company logo at the beginning as many films do and I could improve on that next time. Most films have one track at the beginning of a film introducing the setting and the characters, and I think the way I edited my film and the sequence used these media conventions and there was little dialogue. Using fast cuts and tense music gave the film so much more effect to it and added to the ‘thriller’ type genre I tried to recreate.

Wanting to create as much visual impact as possible I decided to keep the plot as simple as possible. Using the typical ransom letter may seem cliché but it’s successful and it gets the point across to the audience. This has typically been used in many other films, some not even part of the thriller genre.

I found in my research that most of the films did not introduce a character straight away but to make the film to the best of my advantage I had to create a focal point.
The way I introduced the character Laura was also an establishing shot, and I was pleased with the camera work (zoom out) I used to introduce the kidnapper watching Laura. I used an over the shoulder shot so the audience could see what the mystery character was watching (Laura) but also the audience could see the character.

The decisions I made in the filming process was to get as many different angles of the same shot so I had more choice in editing was a wise move as I sometimes found that a shot I had filmed did not look right or there was no continuity. I always had the vision in my head and I storyboarded the shots I wanted. This was altered (as explained in further detail later on) but it was always good to have something to refer to and check off what I had filmed. I researched different types of thrillers and noticed that most began with music to fit the shots and type of tension they wanted to create. I feel that I have achieved this as I built up the pace of the shots (and hopefully the tension) and used one music I felt built up the tension accompany the shots. Also I noticed many of the films showed the opening credits in big, bold, plain lettering; usually white on black. As I had the idea in my head of the torch fading into the title I felt it appropriate to do black on white, but still kept the BOLD aspect to it I believe the fading from the torch into the title went smoothly.