The document discusses how the media production challenges conventions of the action thriller genre. It uses stock characters like an ex-secret agent protagonist and an antagonist current agent, but challenges expectations by setting it in a suburban home rather than busy city streets. It also uses iconography like title fonts and music to establish the genre but then subvert expectations to show the ex-agent now lives a quiet life. The production aims to follow and oppose genre conventions to surprise the audience.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
THE GENRE
Our media production is an Action Thriller genre,
which is a hybrid between Action (films such as Die
Hard or Terminator) and Thrillers (films such as
Panic Room and Se7en). We would compare our
film to others such as any James bond film or Taken
film. This is because these films, similarly to ours are
Action Thrillers and are high budget films using top
actors (such as Daniel Craig or Liam Neeson).
The genre is an important factor of our
film as it sent the stock characters, settings and
iconography that would normally be used in a
successful Action Thriller. We have followed a lot of
these stock features, as well as deliberately
opposing some of them for dramatic effect.

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
THE EX-AGENT
Our media production uses forms and conventions
of real media products, such as stock characters.
Our first character, “The Ex-Agent” is an
important character and personality in a secret
agent, action film (Not necessarily being an EX-
Agent). Our character, “Will” (Played by Philip
Martin) may not look that part in this opening
scene, but we have targeted the cliché personas of
a secret agent and somewhat based him on them.
For example, he is a very clever man, picking out
what he hears and quickly coming to conclusions.
He is also confident about his views and abilities, as
best seen in the conversation scene when he does
not cower from the confrontation from the agent
but rather rises to his challenge and fights his point.
We decided to give Will a strong British
accent to indicate that he is a stereotypical British
agent, who fought for his country in MI5 (until
mistakenly blamed for a failed mission). It also says
a lot about the character, the British stereotype of
being reserved is a goal we aimed to portray in our
film, carried out by showing him spending his time
alone around the house doing not a lot.

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
THE AGENT
Our next (And only other) character is the current
agent. This character is portrayed in the opening
scene as almost the “Bad Guy”. This isn’t however
the case later on in the narrative, but with the
opening scene portrayed from Will’s point of view,
we decided it was important for our audience to
view him like this as Will currently does.
We targeted some of the stock
characteristics of secret agents from other films
such as the “Bourne” or “Mission Impossible”
trilogies. As his character is intended to be a
dedicated and trusted agency worker, we portrayed
him with little emotion and feeling. We wanted the
affect that he had been sent by someone at the
agency with a mission, so to achieve this we tried to
make his lines sound more scripted than Will’s.
We dressed him in a smart suit and some
stereotypical sunglasses so that the character didn’t
need much introduction, as the audience would
assume this characters position in the storyline. It
also highlights the difference between an agent
currently working and Will, our ex-agent.

4. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
THE HOUSE
One way we challenged the stock setting of an
action film was moving away from the inter city
settings and moved to an average suburban
household, away from much action.
We chose to do this because it
successfully juxtaposes what an audience would
expect to see in an action movie. We wanted to
oppose this expectation because we were using the
character of Will to challenge the stereotypical view
of a secret agent. In other words, because Will is no
longer a secret agent, we wanted to show that he
was living a normal life where he can relax.
Combined with the short scene from the park, we
think we successfully showed Will living his private
and now boring life outside of the agency.

5. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
THE
We used iconography in our film to show how it
uses stereotypical features of Action Thrillers to
ensure the audience feel as though that is the genre
we intended the production to be.
ICONOGRAPHY
Features of iconography that we used
include the font for the title credits and the main
movie title itself. We chose to use “Agency FB”
throughout our production as it evokes a formal and
clean image which other Action Thrillers (such as
the Matrix trilogy) use a lot.
The choices of music in different stages
of the opening clip use different features of
iconography. For example the building track when
Will is running from the kitchen is very stereotypical
of Action Thrillers, ending in a sudden climax leaving
the audience confused and questioning. However
the music in the opening scene beginning with Will
at the park is very calm and slow, the exact opposite
of what is expected of a film of this genre. We
deliberately did this to contest the stereotype of the
genre as well as show how the Ex-Agents life is
relatively normal and calm now.