The media product is a drama/thriller about a homeless black teenage boy in London after he covers up his drug-addicted mother's death. It aims to realistically portray the lives of homeless youth in the UK and challenge stereotypical media representations of London teenagers. When deciding the genre, research found thrillers and horror were most popular, especially with teenagers, so the product combines these genres with drama for broad appeal and realism. It uses conventions like ominous opening titles and low-key natural lighting to conform to thriller conventions while working with a low budget.

1. • Our media product features a young black boy who covers up the death of his
drug abusing mother. He then becomes homeless . ‘Numb’ has a prominent sense
of verisimilitude and represents the group of young people who are homeless in
the UK due to difficult home lives. It challenges the medias usual representation
of young people in London as it shows the life of the homeless. However it does
conform somehow because it shows the issues black and ethnic minority groups
deal with.
• When deciding which genre my product would be, we looked at statistics too find
out which one was the most popular in 2016. from our research we found that
the thriller and horror genre were the most popular. We also found from our own
personal questionnaire that those genres were very popular amongst the
younger/teenage audience. Our product is a hybrid of thriller and drama,
because of this we know that it would attract a large target audience and would
bring a sense of reality to the younger viewers and maybe even be quite
relatable.
In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms
and convention of real media products?

2. Existing product: nocturnal animals (2016)
We took inspiration from the colours of this opening title. Before the movie begins
to play this title sequence automatically is telling the audience that the film is
going to be associated with death because of the dark colours including a deep red
which would be associated with blood. By establishing this at the start I found that
It would draw in the audience more than a simple title sequence . This is a very
common feature in thriller movies therefore when we use it our opening would be
conforming to this typical stereotype.
From this scene you can tell that the movie is from a high budget as it uses
block colours on a large scale. However because our movie has a low
budget we had to use natural lighting and familiar scenes, which also added
to the sense of realism that we were trying to achieve. From our research
we found that many physiological thrillers use this same effect if they have
a budget. However in lower budget movies they use low key natural
lighting. For this reason we had to use low key lighting.

3. Inspiration board