Question 1 - in what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My groups thriller film is called, 'The woods', the plot involves a boy and girl walking into a low lit forest, and who go into an abandoned building. They are interrupted by a knocking at the glass, the boy trying to be manly goes to investigate the strange sound, leaving the girl alone. After a while the boy has not returned leaving the girl to go and find him. When she does find him she is surprised to find his is dead and hanging from a tree. In the back of the scene we see the killer go to kill the girl.

Our brief for our group was to create a opening scene for a thriller film which had to last no longer then 2 minutes. The brief had many expectations and had to include a range of camera angles, sound, and a varied use of conventions which all fit in to the thriller genre.  My group consisted of Noah and Alex, who all took up different roles within the film making process. Such as, I was editor and time keeper, meanwhile Alex was in charge of the equipment and also director.  By giving people certain roles, it helped the production roll smoothly.  We also had many people from outside our group to help us, such as actors.

It was essential that we worked well as a group. However we did experience a few step backs as, I couldn't be there for filming as I had other appointments. However we did overcome this step back and still worked well as a team. Overall, I felt like we were a very strong team, who listened to each other’s views and worked around them. I also felt like everyone appreciated feedback from one another and did not take it personally. Key to being such a well knit team is to relate our decisions back to the genre and the conventions associated with it. Therefore we used a typical thriller location, the woods, which kept within the conventions of a thriller. By adjusting to each other’s point of view, I felt like we made high quality decisions throughout the making of our thriller.

 The generic conventions of a thriller are, dark lighting, suspense filled soundtrack, unexpected sounds and a series of camera angles, to name a few. These are key element which you find in successful thrillers, and therefore are key to our own thriller. As individuals and as a group we researched thriller films in hope of inspiration and to further our knowledge on their impact. We found that in many thrillers, they use a quiet location such as woods or forests, such as cabin in the woods. Therefore as a group we decided to use the same location. If we had not of taken the following research we would of used other aspects such as low key lighting which is seen in Prom night, and a suspense filled soundtrack which is seen in The Conjuring. If we hadn’t of researched into these films we wouldn't have known how to use them to their full effect. Although we did use low key lighting throughout our thriller, we added this in while editing. We chose a setting and a story line which would appeal to a age range of 16 – 25, as we hoped the characters who be most relatable to them. . Our opening sequence defines the thriller genre as it obtains many micro elements of the genre throughout the duration of it, if we were to compare our thriller to another film it would be final destination in regards of this.