The document discusses how the opening of a student film uses conventions of the thriller genre. It establishes the setting as a city café through an establishing shot with the title. Costumes of suits and formal wear were chosen to portray the professionalism expected of spy thriller characters. Shots like low angles were used to highlight a character's authority. Music, hidden identities, and an exchange of information between characters aim to generate suspense and questions in the audience as is typical in thrillers. The opening aims to set up intrigue around the microchip being exchanged.

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

2. FILM TITLE
The film title was placed over an establishing
shot of the café in canary wharf. This was
important as they café scene has a big part to
play within the film. The film title is
reasonably short and simple but effective, the
title slides into the scene itself while the
camera is panning around the location. The
idea for coming up with the title is that it can
have multiple meanings and its almost like its
up to the audience to find out how the title
associates with the film. The purpose of
putting the film title over the shot of the café
was that the café is an important part of the
story and therefore the title should be place
their to enhance the importance of the
location.

3. THE SETTING/LOCATION
We created a storyline to fit the typical thriller genre, therefore we tried to find a location that
also fits the typical thriller genre. These locations include cities and other mainstream locations,
we decided to film in the city to fit the typical thriller genre location. We tried to get a similar
setting as the films we were looking to get ideas from, such as mission impossible and knight
and day, which is mainly based in the city. We took the idea as we believe it enhances the realism
of the film and highlights the fact that it is an spy/gangster thriller. We took the idea of
building shots from many films such as; Mr. & Mrs. Smith and mission impossible. In the
screen shot below shows a shot of one of the buildings in city we filmed in, the purpose of this
shot is to let the audience establish that the film is set in a city.

4. COSTUMES AND PROPS
When we decided that the star roles of our movie would be men we then watched many
different spy thrillers, to gain an understanding on what type of costumes or clothing the
characters would be wearing. We watched many spy thrillers such as mission impossible, James
bond and tinker tailor soldier spy. When watching these movies we noticed that the main
characters wear suits and formal wear for a big proportion of the film, we acknowledged that
this is typical of a spy thriller. We then decided that the characters would wear formal clothes
such as suit and ties, as it highlights the professionalism of the film by following the typical spy
thriller genre. Below is two screen shots, one of our character wearing formal wear and another
of James bond wearing formal wear.

5. CAMERAWORK AND EDITING
When we decided that most of the opening would focus on a conversation between two male
characters, we new that most of the shots we take would be over the shoulder shots of the two men
having a conversation. Through the course of the film we took many different types of shots. For
example in one scene we took a low angle shot looking up at one of our male characters looking at
his watch, the purpose of this shot was to highlight the character’s authority and power. We also
used a range of mid shots to try and hide the characters identity, this was important for us to keep
the characters identity hidden as it adds enigma to the opening.
We edited many of the shots to follow the match on action and the 180 degree rule as not to
confuse the audience. We also edited the conversation scene between the two characters by cutting
to each shot to keep the conversation running smoothly.

6. CREDIT FONT AND STYLE
When deciding what font to have we went through the different fonts and decided that we didn’t
want anything that stood out and didn’t fit the film, so we tried to find a font that fits the type of
thriller genre that our opening was. We eventually found a font that suited our film, the font was
simple put related to the narrative of the opening which was our target when picking the film title.
Our next objective was to decide on how the titles were going to be brought onto the screen and
what titles would be shown over the film itself. The first four titles that are shown during the
opening was in a white font over a plain black screen, these titles included the production name the
actors and the director. The title would be swiped on to the screen in between sections of the film.
We then decided that the other titles such as the costume designer would be shown on top of the
opening and would have the same styled font, however the words would be smaller and less
obvious.

7. STORY AND HOW THE OPENING SETS UP
The initial idea for our story was for two agents two meet one another and exchange an item over a
conversation. We decided that the item was to be a micro chip, the reason for this is then the
audience ask questions such as “what is stored in the micro chip?”. We also decided that we wanted
the identity of one of the characters hidden as we wanted our opening to contain enigma, and by
keeping the characters identity hidden this makes the audience ask questions such as who is he?
Why cant we se his face? Also by keeping the identity hidden the audience do not know whether the
character is and antagonist or a protagonist. The purpose of the opening was to enhance the typical
spy thriller genre such as the Bourne identity and mission impossible.

8. GENRE AND HOW THE OPENING SUGGESTS IT
Our film contains many different conventions of a typical spy thriller genre. The film is introduced
with non diegetic music which is typical of a thriller, as it creates suspense and grabs the audiences
attention. We selected a specific soundtrack to be played in the background, and we was looking for
the perfect soundtrack to fit our thriller opening. The soundtrack that we chose is perfect for our
film as it is not to slow and also not to fast and has the perfect pace for our film and to create
suspense. We also chose a city as a location for our thriller opening as it fits the typical thriller genre
and is used as one of the thriller conventions.

9. HOW CHARCTERS ARE INTRODUCED
When creating our opening we decided that our characters would comes across as anonymous to
the audience, so in the opening the audience don’t get to find anything out about the characters.
The characters in our opening are introduced as typical spy thriller genre characters as the
characters identification is hidden and the audience don’t know anything about the characters. We
wanted to introduce our characters similarly to the typical spy thriller films, and we wanted to
introduce the characters the same way that films such as the Bourne identity and James bond
introduce their characters.