Evaluation Q1

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

We created our film to be a psychological thriller. Often psychological thrillers, such as The Shining, the antagonist starts out sane but as the story progresses something about the location or an event causes them to lose their sanity and become more dangerous to the protagonists. Our film conforms to this convention as our character Chris is traumatized by an event which causes him to lose his grip on reality. Our film, however, challenges the normal conventions of psychological thrillers as our character Chris is also the protagonist. 

Our narrative also subverts the genre conventions of psychological thrillers as our film starts by showing what is happening to our protagonist later on the film before a flashback starts the story back at the beginning so the audience can see what or who our protagonist is running away from.

Based on our research of the film Eden Lake, a psychological thriller, we decided to use the setting of a lake surrounded by woodland. The woodland and lake connote danger to the audience as there are plenty of places where danger could be lurking unseen. We also used the setting of an abandoned worksite. The large open area connotes vulnerability as the audience sees Chris is all alone with nobody to help him. Our final setting is that of a care home which also has connotations of vulnerability as our character Chris is obviously unable to look after himself which would make the audience sympathetic as they've just seen what he's gone through before the flashback. 

 In the first 2 minutes of our film we conformed to the genre conventions of psychological thrillers through our use of sound. We included the diegetic sound of waves at the beginning to keep our film realistic and to make the audience think about water as that is a theme throughout our film. We also used non-diegetic sound in the form of piano music playing in the background. The music builds up slowly which adds to the tension as the audience tries to work out who or what is after our protagonist. Another example of non-diegetic sound we used which conforms to genre stereotypes was a high pitched static sound. This signified a change from present time to the flashback. We also used a voice-over to help establish the narrative.
  
   Psychological thriller films often use a mixture of different types of shots in order to build tension. We used this in our film for the same effect. For example we used dolly shots to make the audience focus on the fear on Chris' face. We also used high angle shots on the bloodied up man to connote his vulnerability as he asks for help.

 We also used props through the use of fake blood. This is a typical genre convention of psychological thrillers as blood connotes danger and in the instance of our film, leaves the audience wondering what caused it thus adding to the tension.