victim. The antagonist stalks and attacks the protagonist, disrupting the equilibrium. A note and police reports further the mystery and intrigue, creating an enigma per Barthes' code. The opening establishes the typical thriller characters and binary oppositions between the protagonist and antagonist using Strauss and Propp's theories.

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

2. Conventions of the Thriller
genre
A Film Genre is defined by its codes and conventions & these must be present to make a film a genre film but
should involve some aspect of innovation, subversion &/or inflection ( otherwise it becomes a formula
film). Generic conventions can be to do with sound, editing and Mise-en-scene. Particularly in thrillers they will
include things such as:
• Eerie/tense music, silence, exaggerated sounds
• fast paced cuts, obtrusive editing, jump cuts
• low key lighting, strong directional lighting or chiaroscuro
to fulfil its main elements (suspense, tension and excitement).
• Surprises & Twists
• Plays With Viewers Mind
• Quick Cuts & Change Of Camera Angles
• Music To Add Tension Although we haven’t filmed a full movie,
• Use Of Lighting To Create Shadows there will be surprises and twist, but we
• Mirrors never added any in the opening because we
• Stairs want our audience to stick with the
• From Killers Point Of View stereotypical aspects such as innocent girl,
• Flash Backs dangerous antagonist whose a guy etc.
• Pass Of Time Sequences
• Make Audience Think

3. Mise-en-scene, Camera angels, Editing &
Sound
Camera shots/movement: Different camera angles create different senses of body language
and emotions.
• Close up shots
• Mid range shots
• Tracking/Dolly shot
Editing:
• Fade to black
• Quick edits & changes in camera angle- increases the feeling of fear and shock. Often
used during significant scenes

4. Sound: Contains important elements which make up a thriller such as:
• High pitched sounds/orchestral
• Diegetic/ Non-Diegetic sounds
• Synchronous/asynchronous sounds
• Ambient sounds
• high tension
• eerie
• silence

5. Mise-en-Scène: Contains a few important elements which help add thriller to films and helps to
add suspense such as:
• Props: in thriller films there is a lot of sharp objects and weapons like glass, knives, guns
etc: shows the audience that the objects are going to be used to kill someone or something.
• Set design/ location: locations and settings such as a the city or dark woods give a
thrilling film as it shows mystery and suspense/tension towards the audience.
• Low level lighting- shadows to create fear/tension.
• Flashbacks- time disorientation confusing the audience or showing the past to give an
insight into why the characters are the way they are.
• Black and white colouring- increase effectiveness of shadows.
• Claustrophobic spaces- entrapment of the mind, planes or house.
• Font/colour of title- may be written in a certain way to emphasise the theme of the film.

6. Use, develop or challenge?
Because our thriller ‘Live To Tell’ is a hybrid of thriller sub-genres, we made sure
the opening three minutes showed the particular sub-genres which was mainly
crime and mystery but with mystery comes mind games so psychological aspects
were incorporated within it aswell. Conventions of the thriller genre contain
these elements aswell as as red herrings and cliff hangers which try to lift the
holds the audience’s attention with an eye-grabbing situation with a troubled
character trying to overcome an obstacle(antagonist). We used elements of
mystery because we wanted to stick to the conventions of those particular sub-
genres and create suspense. This will require using your mind to try and figure
who and what is what? therefore the audience will be intrigued to see how it all
unravels in the end when and if the antagonist is defeated. This is seen in many
thrillers especially horror thrillers like ‘I know what you did last summer’ and
‘When a stranger calls’ where they never showed the killers face. I think that
because of the use of these conventions it indicates what type of sub-genre our
thriller is because we have used many stereotypes which you can see in our final
finished product.

7. Here’s a particular scene from ‘I know what you did last summer’ and a still from
our opening to our sequence ‘Live To Tell’ of the antagonist. The use of low angle
shots shows that they have some sort of power and because their identity has not
been revealed, it turns it into a mystery which leads to suspense. Also they’re
wearing dark clothing
Hidden identities
& low angle shots
showing power and
building mystery.

8. When choosing the location for our thriller we wanted to create a lot of tension and suspense because we feel
that they’re essential necessities of a thriller. To do this we used a big forest looking area behind a
secondary school even though we only used a section of it, I would say it fulfilled its purpose. The scene
opens with a high angle shot of the location and the protagonist approaching the opening of the gate to the
forest which emphasises the fact that she's heading for danger. When you see the forest one of the first
things that spring to mind is scary, creepy area and if I’m honest I was scared myself to be filming there
because it was silent and no-one was around except us and the actors/actresses. The surrounding resembles
the ‘Blair Witch Project’ which also used a forest as their location. It was filmed in parts of the forest
where they were the only ones there so they were sort of isolated from the world. The lighting is very dark
with the essence of shadows creating the effect of chiaroscuro which tells/shows the audience they’re
helpless to whatever or whoever is out there.
Below is the location of the forest in our thriller and the one for the Blair Witch Project’.
Left is ‘Live To
Tell’, & on the
right is the ‘Blair
Witch Project’

9. We also used Point of view shots to put the audience in males the opening will focus on her. This sort of
the mind of the antagonist which is used a lot in picks up a convention of a horror but we’ve made it
films especially crime/action thrillers when work with the sub genres we are using.
someone’s being stalked or chased. It is used to
enhance a sense of realism and audience
involvement in the action.
In horrors they usually have a girl or woman who is the
innocent helpless protagonist, as seen in many
horror films such as Scream, I know what you did
last summer which are part of the horror genre.
But in a thriller genre particularly crime thrillers,
its mostly male dominated and the only time a girl
will be in it, is if she’s playing some sort of love
interest for instance Vera Farmiga in ‘The
departed’. We developed/challenged that and made
our protagonist a girl, although there are two main

10. Characters & Narrative theories
Our thriller opening uses a mix of all the narrative theories (Propp, Strauss, Barthe
& Todrov). For starters, the opening scene starts has equilibrium with the
protagonist casually walking home, and then the main part has disequilibrium
when she gets stalked and attacked and then back to equilibrium until she
receives the note which stirs thing up a bit. This is part Todrov’s simple
recurring formula. In addition to that, the note in particular creates an enigma
as mention in Barthes code which teases the audience by presenting a puzzle or
riddle. This incorporates mind games which is a convention of a psychological
thriller. On the otherhand the characters are shown in the opening three
minutes falls into the typical functions Vladimir Propp studied e.g.
villain(antagonist)& princess(protagonist), and throughout our thriller you can see
how the binary oppositions are being portrayed in the characters and their
actions, another theory devised by Claude Strauss. There's a few examples on
the following slide.

11. Note, & police reports
create enigma
Equilibrium and disequilibrium of her
being attacked which disrupts the
sense of equilibrium. You also have
the typical villain, and a princess or in
this case a young girl.