The document discusses how the media product adheres to and challenges thriller conventions. It follows conventions like using contrasting music and imagery to create tension. It also leaves aspects ambiguous and from the female protagonist's perspective, challenging typical male-centered thrillers. By using an uncertain narration and ambiguous ending, it leaves more for the viewer to interpret, developing the convention of maintaining suspense.

1. QUESTION 1:
IN WHAT WAY DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR
CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

2. Upon doing research on thriller conventions, we
learnt the stereotypical ingredients to make a
thriller opening. Thriller openings primarily consist
of three things, suspense, tension and wonder.
Audiences are meant to be hooked from the
beginning, making them want to watch on, and see
what happens throughout the duration of the
thriller. Our main goal when creating our thriller
was to adhere to these conventions and make the
viewer want to watch on, to find out what the story
is.
Conventions of thrillers

3. For example the physcological thriller, from which we
took the most inspiration for our thriller from, ‘Gone
Girl’, includes many techniques to keep the viewers
watching on. An eerily set of music and a close up of
the protagonist Amy, looking beautifully seductive,
accompanied by the apparent antagonist Nick Dunne
saying “I picture cracking her lovely skull” the
immediate contrast between what the viewer is seeing
and what they are hearing is something most directors
of thriller films try to capture, us included.

4. The Gone Girl Opening I Aforementioned

5. For example in the film Reservoir Dogs directed by
Martin Scorsese, the iconic scene in where a character
is getting his ear gruesomely cut off, there is light-
hearted music on in the background with words like
“Here I am stuck in the middle with you”. This majorly
contrasts what is portrayed on scene as we see the
character holding the others ear, covered in blood. The
contrast with the soundtrack to what is happening is
something special and thought provoking that is used
in horrors and something we wanted to capture in our
thriller also.

6. Reservoir Dogs Opening Scene

7. By following these special, but conventional techniques
from typical thrillers with regards to soundtracks, we were
able to keep the tension and creepy atmosphere, despite
what was shown on screen. For example when the
montage full of happy memories that the couple in the
thriller have shared is playing, the creepy and haunting
music that was playing subtly in the beginning of the
thriller remains playing, to hint at the underlying problem
and also contrast what is playing on the screen. This
creates a feeling of unease, and that despite the happy
times there is horror to come.

8. Our media product also develops forms and conventions
of thriller films, as it leaves a lot up to the viewer to
decipher. Most thriller films have to leave the viewer in
suspense throughout, to keep them entertained and
enticed. We have chosen to do this in our thriller as most
thrillers do this, however we have took it one step further
as the voiceover in our film really adds suspense with our
protagonist saying this like “Is this what we’ve become?” at
the end of our opening. By leaving the end of the opening
on a rhetorical question, it leads the viewer wondering
what will happen for the duration of the thriller. And
already, by using the use of voiceovers to leave a lot open
to interpretation, the viewer is experiencing the same
thoughts and emotions as the protagonist is throughout.

9. Black Widow Scene

10. We chose to use a voiceover to get the effect of knowing the
character more personally, being able to hear the emotion
through her voice and understand how she’s feeling. By
having this uncertainty, and not making it clear in our
opening we leave the reader to think, has she killed her lover
or is she merely plotting to kill him? This is exactly the kind
of reaction thriller openings want to create from their
openings, hence why we decided it would be much more
suited to leave our opening as an unanswered question, as
opposed to our original idea of making it clear that she had
killed her lover. If we’d have gone with this option, it would
have limited where the story could go from the opening,

11. However since we decided to leave the question more
unanswered, this allows us to have many potential plotlines;
perhaps she has killed him and will go on to kill more men,
perhaps she is delusional and hasn’t killed him, perhaps she
has cheated on him and it has made her go insane. The
unlimited possibilities of options where to go with the plot
from here meant that we had a clear vision when making
and editing our thriller, where we wanted to go with the
narrative, and how we wanted to develop conventions of
thrillers, such as the uncertainty of what will happen. We
chose to have no clear difference between what is reality
and what is the protagonist’s imagination, it could have

12. It is definitely arguable that through this narration, it is
an unreliable perception of her views on her lover – and
if we had been told the story from his perspective,
things may be completely different, and perhaps more
creepy – as he is constantly living in fear of the
unknown, and what his lover may do to him should she
found out about his infidelities

13. We chose to have the story told from
the perspective of the woman, as we
felt that females in thrillers aren’t
represented as much as males, and we
wanted to challenge this majority.
Female Perspective

14. For example, the film The Woman In Black has a leading
male character, Daniel Radcliffe, who discovers the
mystery surrounding The Woman In Black by himself,
with no help from females throughout the film.

15. Females, when they do appear in thriller films, are perceived as
dumb and ditsy – being the first to be taken away, or killed –
however in our thriller the woman (whilst perceived as
manipulative and evil) is also shown to be clever and witty with
her plot to kill her lover.