Our media product uses and develops conventions of the thriller genre including suspense, tension, uncertainty, anticipation, surprise and terror. It is inspired by the thriller Sweeney Todd, using similar dark green colors and decaying settings to represent raw nature and the psychological state of the characters. Camera work includes shots that look down on the fearful female character, revealing bruising to suggest her treatment, while non-diegetic sinister music with repetitive lyrics adds to the unsettling atmosphere. Jump cuts are used to surprise the audience and encourage questioning about unseen events.

1. Evaluation 1
In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

2. Thriller Conventions
The main conventions of a thriller:
Suspense
Tension
Excitement
As well combined with
Uncertainty
Anticipation
Surprise
Terror
To keep the audience on the edge, and always one step behind.

3. The slow pace of our thriller sequence
enables to pursue our initial idea of
character development. Our film begins
with dark, low key lighting. This creates a
gloomy and mysterious atmosphere which
fits in with the genre of our sequence,
creating pathetic fallacy.

4. Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd - Tim Burton, whose work is
known to be eccentric and gothic based, was a
huge inspiration to our piece. As well as this, the
representation of women and sexuality within
this time period were also an inspiration. The
dark green colors represent
raw nature and decay
which generates a
negative psychological
interpretation of the
character.

5. Innocence
Our thriller is inspired by the main forms and
conventions that are shown throughout
Sweeney Todd.

6. Mise En Scene
We wanted to use dark green, earth
orientated colours to represent our ideas
of decay.
We shot our thriller outside in a forest and
swamp like location, where there was
decaying boat.
As well as this our character was dressed in
a dark green and brown dress to
symbolize her decomposition.

7. Camera Work
Our character was shown in many different angles,
but the most important one was when she was
being looked down on by a man who had
spotted her.
Our main purpose of this was to show her as a
lonely female who is fearful of the more
dominant gender, who at the time was the man.
The full body shots of our character where to show
how she would have been seen as a sex symbol
in those days. Even though she seems modestly
dressed, the close up shots of the bruising on
her face reveal otherwise to the audience.

8. Sound
Nero-Innocence
The non diegetic choice of music we decided to
add to our piece was often questioned. It is has
a very dreary and sinister dubstep beat with the
a constant repetition of the lyrics ‘Innocence,
you’ll never be mine...’.The main intention of
using this music was to bring in a harsh and
creepy feel which would fit with the old setting
but, when mixed with modern day music, further
helped us to combine the two sub genres we
were using. These were a 1900’s gothic
literature incorporated with a modern and edgy
theme.

9. Editing
We used jump cuts throughout our film to
show the audience something they are
unaware of. This was the scene in the
bath which then cut back to the main
location. We did this to make the audience
aware that something else was going on
which encouraged them to ask questions.
This idea is often used in thrillers as it
makes the audience have a constant
focus, as they don’t want to miss anything.