1. The film uses conventions of psychological thrillers by focusing on the mental state of the main character Lucy through a therapy session setting and flashbacks. 2. Costuming, settings and props are realistic to develop a sense of realism, while also foreshadowing danger through Lucy's red sweater and a bloodied knife. Camera techniques like close-ups are used to focus on Lucy's expressions. 3. Editing techniques like fade transitions, jump cuts and music create tension between calm therapy scenes and disorienting, fast-paced flashbacks that mirror Lucy's state of mind.

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

2. Narrative
● We chose to display the credits at the beginning of the
film stating who starred in it and who directed it. We did
this first as the film opens in a therapy session, this
section is quite slow so we thought the titles would work
well here. We didn’t want to place them when an
exciting or important section of the film was being
produced as this would distract the viewer.
● The opening sequence is non-linear as we have sections
of a therapy session with the protagonist and then quick
disorienting flashbacks to imply why she is there. We
chose to flashback to be shown in small section like this
as we wanted to emphasise this is the main character's
mind and at the moment it is all jumbled up, this
connotes that something may be wrong with her mental
state.

3. Genre and Mise-en-scene
● We chose the genre of psychological thriller, this is portrayed as in the opening
sequence we heavily focus on Lucy Jones- our main character. Psychological
thrillers highly focus on the psychological mental state of the character, we have
emphasised this as Lucy is having to have a therapy session.
● We dressed Lucy in normal clothes and used a house and therapy setting, these
all provide a sense of realism that psychological thrillers need. Lucy is in darker
clothes and even wears red jumper to foreshadow that something bad may
happen as red connotes danger and blood. We have a prop of a knife which
Lucy uses to kill her Dad, although in the flashback we don’t see this act happen
it is connoted by the blood on the knife. We also used a mirror at the end of the
sequence, this is a popular prop in Psychological thrillers as it shows the
character reflecting on their inner self.
● This links to the silence of the lambs as this is also a psychological thriller.
Throughout the film the characters wore normal clothes and the beginning was
set in a police station which gave a sense of realism. We tried portraying this in
our film by taking aspects out of this.

4. Camera angles,Editing and sound
● Throughout the therapy session we use an extreme
close up of Lucy, we wanted to focus on her facial
expressions so the viewer could see whether or not she
was lying. We also used a point of view shot of Lucy
messing with her hands nervously, this shows that she
was anxious and didn’t want to talk about what
happened. We used slow paced editing to signify that
this was a calm and safe environment for Lucy, we also
used shot reverse shot to show the conversation more
clearly however we tried not to focus on Sophia (the
therapist). We used a low non diegetic music that
created a small amount of tension but wasn’t too
overpowering in order to still hear the dialogue.

5. Continued
● We use fade to blacks or dissolves to smoothly transition into the flashbacks. On
the first flashback we positioned Lucy on the stairs alone, this makes her look
isolated and demonstrates that she doesn’t have anyone, there is a diegetic
sound of her saying ‘no’ repeatedly with a non diegetic sound of her parents
arguing, it isn’t entirely clear because we wanted to intrigue the audience so they
would continue watching.

6. Continued
● On the second flashback we started with a high
angle shot of Lucy looking through the cutlery
draw, this conveys her as vulnerable because she
isn’t thinking straight. We then use a shaky point
of view shot of Lucy rummaging through the draw
trying to find a knife, these shots are very fast
paced and we hear the diegetic sounds of the
cutlery clicking together, this creates tension.
Then next shot is also point of view but we did this
in slow motion to juxtapose the previous shot and
to display that now Lucy’s mind has slowed down
and she has begun to think about what she is
doing. We used non diegetic sounds of heavy
breathing and a heart beat to connote that Lucy
has high adrenaline.

7. Continued
● On the final flashback we used jump cuts and an
effect which meant you could see the action
happen repeatedly. This disorientated the viewer
and the jump cuts show how Lucy’s mind is
cutting things out. We used a non-diegetic loud
intense music to act as a jump scare and to
connote what Lucy did and the film has become
more intense now. We follow this with our title of
the film, it is written in red writing that looks like
blood. This typography amplifies the genre and
foreshadows that there may be a lot of blood in
the film.