Our media product features a young black boy who becomes homeless after his drug abusing mother dies. It challenges stereotypical media representations of homeless youth in London by showing the realities they face. While it deals with issues faced by black and minority groups, conforming somewhat to reality, it also aims to bring awareness through its realistic portrayal. When deciding the genre, research found thrillers and horror most popular in 2016, especially with teenagers. Our product combines these popular genres with drama to attract a large audience and increase realism for young viewers. It develops conventions by using natural lighting and familiar scenes to portray realism on a low budget, as psychological thrillers typically do when limited financially.

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. 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