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

I think that the opening sequence to our film sets up for a psychological thriller; this is portrayed through editing techniques, which utilise audio and visual effects to show a lack of clarity and confusion within the lead roles. Often crime thrillers follow the criminal rather than the law, which is something we have done by concentrating on Bekah's character. The film also distances itself from being generalised as a horror by using the lead villain in the opening sequence and making this clear to the viewers, this is a convention used a lot by detective/crime thrillers such as Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992), which follows the bank robbers from the start. Another convention of the thriller genre is that most thrillers start off by introducing an event, which leads to issue that needs to be resolved, such as a killing, murder or news of any of those. For us this is the posting of a kidnapping tape.

The way in which our sequence focuses on the mind of the protagonist is similar to how Mr. Brooks (Bruce A. Evans, 2007) follows its killer (Mr. Brooks), who is mentally all over the place, and indulges in killings to please his mental alter ego self. Our film has a less mentally unstable lead, which gave us the problem of subtly implying her confusion. I think that this area is where some of our style is, to differentiate us from other thrillers. We use more effects than is the norm, by ghosting throughout our sequence to blur and confuse.For example the first shot on Ms Williams face uses an improvised effect made up of cuts and fades to put across this feeling of confusion and mental conflict. We used audio to potray confusion aswell in the shot where Samantha is shown kneeling over Williams in a Williams POV, Samantha's speech is echoed to disturb the normality of her dialogue. We used point of view shots from the victim to not completely put the viewer in the head of the kidnapper, instead to pull the viewer back a bit to keep them guessing.

I guess one of our biggest convention breakers is to use two female leads, which is rare, for almost any genre, but thrillers in particular. There are countless staples of the thriller genre in the form of male actors, but few females, some who feature in many thrillers are Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Ridley Scott, 1979; Eyewitness, Peter Yates, 1981; Vantage Point, Pete Travis, 2008; etc) and Nicole Kidman (Peacemaker, Mimi Leder, 1997; The Others, Alejandro Amenabar, 2001; The Interpreter, Sydney Pollack, 2005; etc).

Our second setting, which is the kidnapper’s room where she is holding the victim, is our attempt to imitate the conventional dungeon/prison used by kidnappers in other thrillers, but we also used mise-en-scen from some horrors. We wanted to make it obvious this is a serious kidnapping, this means removing natural light, using an empty emotionless room with decaying props. We looked at mise-en-scene from films such as Saw (James Wan, 2004) and Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005). We went for a less industrial look as we felt that it would not be appropriate for our protagonist.