Evaluation Question One

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

Throughout our thriller opening we have tried to both use and challenge forms of other media products. We have done this through the use of camera angles, character choice and the mise-en-scene, in particular the spacing of the characters on the screen.

Towards the beginning of the opening, there is a close-up of our female victim. We show her to the stereotypical, blonde haired, vulnerable victim, she is seen to have been crying and begging for her life. This complies with the conventions that we see in many thriller movies that women are vulnerable, needy and weak; this is similar to Drew Barrymore’s character, Casey Becker, in Scream. She is seen to be vulnerable and weak as she begged for her life, we wanted to draw from something like that when it came to our female victim. 

We tied up our 2 victim based characters in the centre of the room, there are shots to show this in various points throughout the thriller movie. This uses the forms and conventions of a thriller film, as it has a female victim, which isn’t uncommon throughout the genre, examples including; Taken, Along Came a Spider and Trapped. It gives into the stereotype as it tends to be women who get kidnapped as they are seen as ‘easier prey’. However we also challenge the form and convention by also having a male victim, especially considering it was a female antagonist.

We have a strong female character antagonist, which isn’t very common throughout thriller movies, but is becoming increasingly more common to show women in thriller movies to be enigmatic or disturbingly sadomasochistic. We wanted to challenge the stereotype that not just thriller movies, but all movies have. That is that women are weaker than men, we wanted our female lead to have all the qualities that a male character would have in that position; no remorse, motivation, merciless and vengeful. Thriller movies that have a strong female antagonist include; Crimson Peak, Stoker and Excision.