This document discusses how the media product of a student film thriller draws from and challenges conventions of the thriller genre. It summarizes the individual research members conducted on the thriller film "Taken", analyzing its camera work, editing, sound, and mise-en-scene. Though the student film uses elements like a flashback and non-diegetic music similarly to "Taken", it develops these conventions with different contextual uses that challenge thriller genre expectations. Specifically, the music in the student film conveys sadness rather than impending danger, and the film portrays hitmen as emotionally complex humans rather than "heartless".

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

2. THRILLER
 For our film opening we made a thriller as we felt
this was the genre of film our group most enjoyed
and consequently we thought that we would be
able to be more interactive and creative because of
this as we all had a good understanding of the
thriller genre. In addition to this each group
member carried out their own individual research
which consisted of watching a thriller researching
about that thriller on the internet and then posting
the findings on our blog. Therefore this research
worked successfully as following this we were able
to identify what elements of the thriller genre we
could maybe use in our film and what necessarily
wouldn’t work.

3. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
 The individual research we carried out is known as
textual analysis and this analysis focused on the
four media aspects of camera, editing, sound and
mise en scene. For my individual research I studied
the thriller ‘Taken’ as similar to our film the plot
revolves around a kidnapping that takes place early
on in the film. Therefore from this research I was
able to see what elements of the thriller ‘Taken’
uses and our group all brought their ideas together
to discuss what elements we would in fact use in
our film, that is used in the film they studied
individually.

4. ‘TAKEN’ (2008)
 From my research I found that ‘Taken’
starts with slow, high pitched, non-
diegetic music which immediately tells us
that this is a scary film and something bad
is going to happen- Therefore in our film
we used a non diegetic, slow soundtrack
however it was used in a very different
context to ‘Taken’ as in our film this
music created an element of sadness.
 In addition to this ‘Taken’ also starts with
a flashback which is what we used in our
film. The flashback in ‘Taken’ is of his
daughter and along with the music this
makes the audience assume that there is
a link between this music and the girl, and
this subtly conveys that something bad is
going to happen to her. This is therefore
similar to our film as we also used a
flashback.

5.  However we have developed and challenged some of
the ideas of the films we studied. For example ‘Taken’
starts with slow, high pitched, non-diegetic music which
immediately tells us that this is a scary film and
something bad is going to happen- However in our film
we used this non diegetic, slow soundtrack in a very
different context to ‘Taken’ as in our film this type of
music created an element of sadness.
In addition to this in most thrillers hit men are generally
portrayed as ‘heartless’ as they do not usually convey
any emotion at what they are doing. However in our film
through the voice over which makes up Mark’s (Andre’s)
internal thoughts as he states ‘oh Steve, you died so
young’ and through the fact that Darren is in fact trying
to save his fellow hitman perceives a very different view
of hit men and this suggests that hit men do in fact have
feelings as they are human- being.