The document discusses how a media project challenges conventions of similar psychological thriller films. It analyzes the film "Black Swan" to understand typical conventions like troubled protagonists. The project challenges conventions by having a simple opening and giving the protagonist a difficult background. It follows conventions like using suspenseful music and a vulnerable young female protagonist. It also uses conventions like starting with a flashback to build intrigue.
1. Question 1
In what ways does your media products
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
2. Research
• By researching recent films and products
similar to ours, we had picked up what the
typical conventions of media products are
used today.
• “Black Swan” is a typical psychological thriller
and was rather easy to analyse as it presented
to us a lot of what we were looking for.
3. Troubled Protagonist
What we see is that the protagonists always seems to have something troubling them
making them uneasy and distant from their loved ones. They are also portrayed as to
being in their own world and not focusing on what is ahead of them. The protagonist in
“Black Swan” played by Natalie Portman reinforces the stereotypical portrayal of
someone who is determined to be the best and a perfectionist, can get burdened by
high expectations and start suffering mentally. However in “Donnie Darko” we know
that he (the protagonist played by Jake Gyllenhal) is probably …
4. Challenged forms
• How we tried to challenge codes of convention
was by paying attention to the genre and topic of
what we was doing.
• Also what we tried was to not make the opening
of the film seem too Hollywood cliché so we
challenged this by making it simple and not over-
doing things such as making the situation that
had taken place too dramatic but easy for the
audience to understand and straight to the point.
5. How were they used or developed?
• How we used similar conventions was by making the protagonist
seem as though they were going mad after losing someone close to
them.
• This is a very common symptom in most psychological thrillers and
usually the protagonist would seem as if they were closed off from
the world and weren’t paying attention to things around them.
• However, how we developed them was by giving the protagonist a
tough background by making the mother seem inconsiderate and
selfish or thinking about and for themselves constantly rather than
those around them.
• This seemed an effective technique as it would give the audience
more of an insight into how she lives and what problems may be
faced at home.
6. In our film
• The conventions we followed were non-diagetic sounds
such as suspenseful music. The type of music we chose
were of violins playing at a fast pace and the pitch-
raising higher each time.
• This gave a good sense of chaos and distress
surrounding our protagonist and was an effective tool
as it made things seem more intense; as though
something was going to happen. It also gave a sense of
foreshadowing, that something bad was going to
happen.
• Another convention we followed is that we used a
vulnerable young female who could be seen as fragile.
7. What was done?
• We also used similar conventions by starting with
a flashback and gradually building up from there.
• Many films of similar genre use the same
technique as it gives an effective sense and gives
the viewer a feel of what is the cause of the
protagonists problem.
• Moreover, the flashback scene can give a sense of
questioning and curiosity to know what
happened and what the background story is,
especially to what had happened to the
protagonists friend.
