The document discusses the conventions of thriller movies and how the opening sequence of a project adheres to or challenges these conventions. It outlines conventions like a crime occurring due to an antagonist, clues for the protagonist to follow, risk to life, and an action-packed narrative. The summary analyzes how the opening sequence includes a baby kidnapping, close-ups of the distraught mother's reaction, and slow editing to build tension. While containing these thriller elements, it challenges conventions by having a female protagonist and representing women and parents in countertypical ways.

1. CCR 1
How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does
it represent social groups or issues?

2. What Genre is
our opening
sequence
Thriller

3. Conventions of
Thrillers
 A crime normally happens which is caused by the antagonist.
 There is always a victim of some sort. Normally that person
would be a missing person, a dead body or a hostage.
 There is an antagonist who has the purpose of causing chaos or
a problem that will need to be fixed during the movie.
 There are some sort of clues that the protagonist will follow to
solve the problem or be led to a trap.
 There will be a moment when a character will talk about how
clever the antagonist is.
 There will be something that the antagonist wants or is trying
to get. The crime at the beginning will often hint towards the
thing they are trying to get
 A person trying to cause problems by saying one thing and
doing something else instead. This will often affect the
protagonists plans.
 There is normally a deadline by which the protagonist has to
figure out who the antagonist is and stop him or her from doing
more harm.
 Someone life will be risked as they get closer to defeating the
protagonist.
 There is often a false ending when you think it is over but it is
deceiving and there is one final challenge.
 I used these websites to make notes and find out the
convention of thriller movies:
 https://storygrid.com/thriller-genre/
 https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/thriller-conventions

4.  The narrative will create tension and adventure for the audience. It can also tend to be quite violent
and aggressive. It will also be action based.
 Blood and injury.
 Isolated locations.
 The colour scheme is usually quite dark and de saturated.
 There are diegetic sound effect such as footsteps and noises in fight sequences.
 Fast paced editing during fight sequence and tense moments.
 Or slow paced editing to create tension and leave the audience waiting and wanting more.
 Creepy and eerie music.
 Close ups to show serious emotional reactions this will often be when someone find something out.
 Tilt shot to show disorientation or create chaos.
 High angle shots to make someone look weak and vulnerable.
 Low angle shots to make someone look powerful and dominant.
 I used these websites to make notes and find out the convention of thriller movies:
 https://storygrid.com/thriller-genre/
 https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/thriller-conventions

5. Film and TV
show
examples:

6. Camera
This is a comparison between Taken and our
opening sequence. In both scenes there is a close
up and some sort of sound machine. In ours the
mother overhears the kidnapper on the baby
monitor taking the baby and in Taken the father
is overhearing his daughter being kidnapped. The
close up shows the importance of the sound
device as that is how the parents know that
something is going wrong and happening to their
children.
There is a close ups to show serious emotional
reactions. This is typical of the genre as
thrillers tend to be a very character driven
narrative and it feels more personal. In both
scenes there are parents reacting to the kidnap
of their child.

7.  High angle shot on the kidnapper
when walking up the stairs.
Makes her seem vulnerable even
though she was the one doing the
kidnapping. This leads you to
believe there is more to the
story.

8. Editing
 The duration of the shots are quite long and the slow
paced editing creates and builds tension which will
eventually gradually get faster which is very typical of the
genre. It makes you want to keep on watching because it
intrigues you and you want to know what happens next.
Blocky text, metallic sort of
looking, shadows. Bold and
dramatic. Emphasis.

9. Sound
This is a comparison
between The Birds and our
opening sequence. In The
Birds there are children
singing in the background
when all the birds
accumulate that has sinister
undertones. The birds are
quite scary and are all
bunched together while the
children are singing happily.
In our opening sequence we
have calming baby music in
the background which has
eerie undertones.

10. Mise En Scene
Low key lighting, sneaky around
and up the stairs, not meant to
be there,
In both scenes the
antagonists are
wearing dark
clothing.

11. Differences
 In most movies for example: Taken and Man on fire it is
the man who saves the day and rescues their child but
in ours it is the mother which goes against the typical
thriller conventions of the man or father saving the day
and rescuing the child and being the powerful one.

12.  We didn’t do many low or high angle shots on
the characters which is normally what thriller
movie would have. This is to make the
characters either seem powerful or more
vulnerable. In our opening sequence we wanted
to make the characters feel more relatable. As
the mother is experience a highly traumatic
situation and the feelings she goes through as
she realizes what has happened and that her
child has been kidnapped. Also the kidnapper is
made to feel more relatable as later later on in
the film you will realise she is probably not an
evil kidnapper but she is probably really
troubled and struggling and there is more to her
story.

13. Action sequences- ours isn’t as action packed for example there
are no guns and weapons in our opening sequence. However in the
rest of our movie it would get more action packed.

14. Characters
 She is behaving in the way a protagonists
would usually act but it is a women instead
of a man. She is following all the typical
conventions of having serious emotional
reactions and being scared and panicked.
 In the movie Kidnap it is also a female
protagonist whose child has been kidnapped
and behaving in the typical way protagonists
would act.

15. Narrative
 This kidnapping narrative is typical for the genre but it isn’t a typical
situation in everyday life, often in this genre we see people being kidnapped
and we are constantly in everyday life thinking or knowing about all the
things we should be afraid of. It does happen but you don’t often get people
climbing through windows and kidnapping your children.
 Normally the kidnapper has quite dark clothing which can also be seen in our
opening sequence but she isn’t the typical evil character that we would
expect. She seems to care about the baby and hint to the fact that she is the
birth mother. This gives us many enigma codes about why she has taken the
baby, where she has taken the baby and is she really the mother?

16. Tone
 The tone of our opening sequence is
established by the following thing:
 It is quite de saturated in many areas.
 The slow pace sets tone as it makes you
feel on the edge and tense as you want
to know what happens next and at the
end it gets faster paced which matches
the scene and how the mother is
rushing to see whats happened to her
baby.
 The eerie sound of the baby monitor
with the ominous sound effects over
the top fills tone.

17. What are the typical conventions of opening sequences eg intro to a character,
titles etc and how have you either used or challenged these conventions?
Titles:
Our title is quite
blocky and has
shadows around it-
typical for a thriller
movie.

18. Steve Neale genre theory
Genres are made up of
repetition and
difference.
In a horror movie there
is normally dark, low-
key lighting, tense
music, jump scares
abandoned buildings,
forests.
Repeated through lots of
films
Audience becomes
familiar
Audience tend to like
that repetition because
it makes it easier for us
to understand the genre

19. Social groups
represented in
our opening
sequence.
In our opening sequence we have represented
women.
We have represented parents.
We have represented middle class.

20. How have we represented these social
groups
 Women: mother in opening sequence at home with baby working.
 Parents: the main character is a mother. Plays on a fear that most parents
have of loosing a child or having a child taken.
 Middle class: they live in a nice home. This lovely lady is in her lovely home
and still isn’t safe and it jolts our fear that no one is safe.

21. Characters and social groups
represented in a countertypical way.
 Dad feels protective and
normally go after the child
rather than mother. In many
action movies. The way they
are typically shown
 In our opening sequence the
mother is conventional as she is
the one at home looking after
the kids but she is also not
conventional as she is working
and normally it would be the
man/father to discover the
kidnapping and go out and get
the baby back. But in ours it
would be the mother.
 This would target a female
audience by having this female
character as she is a mum, she
is working, and it shown as
quite powerful.

22. Editing
 In our opening sequence we did quite slow paced editing. The reason we did
this is because the mother is really tired, it builds tension because the
audience know the kidnapper is going up the stairs but then there is a shot of
the mother calmly sitting at the dining table. The mother also doesn’t know
her baby is being kidnapped which is quite a dramatic moment.
 If this was a real film, later on we would do more fast paced editing. This
would be during scenes when she was trying to get the baby back.

23. Camera
 We did a lot of close ups on the
mother to show that she is
extremely emotional and that is
how a mother or women would
react conforming to that
stereotype of women being
emotional and vulnerable.
 This is an example of a close up
shot on Stacy.

24. Sound
 Non diegetic music playing in the
background. Intensifies as the scene
gets more tense, parallel sound
meaning the music fits the image on
the screen.
 Eerie, creepy, something is going to
happen

25. Mise En Scene
 The parents bedroom is full of things. There is a cot, a baby monitor. The
baby is clearly very well looked after and taken care of in a nice home which
represents the social group of middle class.
 This plays on fear that even if you are wealthy and give your child a great life
and a nice home there is still danger and they might not always be safe.

26. Laura Mulvey and Van Zoonen
 Laura Mulvey:
 Goes against as she is the powerful one that will get her baby back and she
is also a working mother.
 Van Zoonen:
 Women are represented as domestic.
 The mother is at home looking after the baby.

27. Levi Strauss
 Binary opposites:
 Kidnapper vs Mother
 But also goes against it as we find out that the kidnapper may be the birth mother and so the two
characters may have more similarities than the audience think.
 Stacy is wearing soft toned clothing and is portrayed as very loving and caring whereas Alice is
wearing very dark toned clothing and she is a teenager who seems quite careless and doesn’t care
that she is breaking into someone’s home even if there is more to the story.