2. Q1 How does your products use or
challenge conventions? How do they
represent social groups or issues?
3. Media Studies As level requires us to make a two minutes
film opening on any selected genre on any topic, so the
product my team and I made, is a two minute film
opening, the genre being hybrid genre of thriller-drama
on the social issue of prostitution. We decided to choose
this as our topic after taking surveys. Social Issues are
something everyone is interested in watching and
something as taboo as prostitution will make it more
popular among our young generation.
The generally accepted ways of doing something is
known as conventions. There are general conventions in
any medium, such as the use of interviewee quotes in a
print article, but conventions are also genre specific. Like
thriller conventions include building up of suspense.
4. Thriller has been a successful film genre since the films began.
They’re produced to entertain and give people new
experiences about life which are always fascinating to their
audience. My film is a short sequence of a thriller and drama
hybrid movie.
To understand our genre we did a lot of research. My team
and I watched a lot of movies mainly related to the genre
thriller and drama which involved prostitution; we watched
both Hollywood and Bollywood as we wanted to see both
worldwide and cultural aspects of the conventions. Movies we
watched were, Se7en, Psycho, M.F.A, Talaash, Salaam
Bombay and Chameli. We surfed the web for articles which
may help us establish the genre and help us depict
prostitution in the subcontinent. I also read a book on
prostitution in Pakistan, Dancing girl of Lahore by Louise
Brown.
7. To portray this social issue to our audience we
decided to make a montage film opening, montage
is the editing technique of assembling separate
pieces of thematically related film and putting them
together into a sequence, it involves a lot of close-
ups and diegetic sounds. We went with it as it
grasps the attention of the audience in a very less
time which was our goal. We added scenes of the
exteriors in the beginning to show the audience the
location, and later we started fast paced editing of
the scenes taking place inside the brothel which
showed shots of smoking and dancing close-ups.
8. Conventions
My film opening as a whole would follow traditional
conventions by having a well established antagonist (Pinky) and
protagonist (Nayl and Chotu) as well as following the story of arc
of a climax and resolution.
My film opening challenges the thriller convention of using low
key lighting which is typically used for darker films with a
serious story line, ‘Shahdana’ uses high key lighting, as we
wanted to portray prostitution as a normal and not a taboo, the
bright colour palette helps us do that.
9. It follows the convention of using a montage to
portray thriller genre.
‘Shahdana’ uses quick cuts, a thriller convention and
shadows which helps builds up the intensity.
10. ‘Shahdana’ follows the convention of using
suspense/tension music, with diegetic sound of
shoe brushing, ghungroo, tea boiling, cars passing
by, goat bleating, and lighting a match.
It also follows the use of canted shots for showing a
desperate action or something wrong.
11. • Thriller uses busy streets and the environment is
usually urban or suburban.
