Part 1 Question 1- In what ways does your media product use,devleop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products

                                                          Part 1-question 1         

My group's opening to a thriller; A Soul’s Redemption challenges your typical thriller expectations. A thriller usually consists of a battle between the protagonist character and the antagonist, when there is a disruption in the equilibrium, the aim of the protagonist is to restore justice while the antagonist seeks to destroy it. Even though our thriller does keep the typical ideology of a thriller film, both our protagonist (the one who’s there to save the day) and the antagonist (the one who wants to destroy) are both Bertie. The antagonist is the devil in which possessed Bertie and the protagonist being Bertie trying to fight the demon. You would typically expect there to be two characters one who you love and want to save the day, and a bad character, the one who you want to disappear. We aimed to make Bertie seem both a loving, innocent boy and both this demon taking out his anger on the world for the death of his family. Throughout our opening we aimed to sustain conventions of a thriller by using low key lighting, quick cuts and changes in the angle of shots. We used these conventions throughout to give our thriller a more adrenalin rush feel to it. The use of the low key lighting was easy to create as we filmed our thriller in January making the weather seem gloomy anyway. We felt by using these conventions such as quick cuts and different angles/shots would keep the audience well gripped onto our film and give the impression of this constant jumping.

The use of this ‘big eye’ effect aims to show the clear divide between the protagonist and antagonist. We wanted to show this in order to show that Bertie was clearly not himself; the use of the big eyes represents the devil that has possessed Bertie.

We used Cabin in the woods as a inspiration for our opening to a thriller film. We felt Cabin in the woods had a similar target audience to us and like the title ‘Cabin in the woods’ its filmed in a wood, which is a similar location to us. I feel that even though I did previous research on Cabin in the woods, it didn't influence our final piece as much as I wanted it too. It still incorporated the jumpy element and a dark feel to it but wasn't as similar as I previously anticipated.

Establishing shot for A Soul's Redemption

Establishing shot for Cabin in the Woods

Within the opening sequence of Cabin in the Woods an establishing shot is used to confirm the setting. Similarly in our opening we used an establishing shot in order to show the audience where the film will be set. However, within Cabin in the Woods the director used a high wide angle showing in the horizon it is still a forest emphasising the effect on how big the forest is, whereas in our opening we used a point of view shot in order to give the audience the effect that they were stood there looking at the forest.