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

In our film ‘Classified’ we really exploit the feeling of enigma, creating confusion and tension upon the viewers; this is imputed using a lack of narration of what’s happening, its also not clear who’s the protagonist and who’s the antagonist in this opening which is a trait of certain thriller film openings and the hints towards why these two people are enemies are purposely not shown to emphasise this enigma effect; many other thriller film openings begin this same way, inception which is part thriller part Sci-Fi begins with someone washed up on the sea confusing viewers wondering why he’s there and who he is, the same effect is interpreted in our film but presented in a different way with the close up of the antagonists feet walking whilst cutting to the protagonist sleeping during a non-diegetic eerie soundtrack plays over the close up.

Tension and suspense is a key aspect of any thriller and we tried including this in our film opening many times but the most unique part of the film has to be when we included the sound bridge where we used the diegetic Foley of the antagonist walking and joined it to another shot in a different location of the protagonist sleeping, this shows that the character is getting closer and the antagonist is after the homeless protagonist sleeping.

We used a dark and mysterious mise en scene thriller convention, the setting and décor was of an abandoned building with things broken and the interior disfigured and rather scary, the vast emptiness almost formed a sense of isolation when alone in certain parts of the building but amongst the stairs and hallways there was very little breathing space and the atmosphere was compact allowing us to film a quick tense chase scene.

The costume was distinctive with the protagonist wearing dirty clothes to show he’s on the run and the same goes for the antagonist with a total contrast of costume with him wearing a big posh trench coat and shirt but the shirt was creased showing the antagonist has been after the protagonist for some time. This costume idea was to really emphasise that the antagonist is working for a rich organisation, whereas the protagonist comes from nothing; this is a similar style too the thriller Lucy where an organisation is after someone on the run who has nothing but herself to rely on.

We stuck to the 180 degrees rule and used match on action a lot and eye line match when possible but because there was no talking in our opening it was difficult to include shot reverse shot as we thought changing the tension and suspense of the opening just to include a technique would be a mistake; other films like ‘Se7en’ also include this technique of no speech on the opening as it sometimes is more effective than when someone talks this links back to the enigma side of the film which I strongly believe is one of the most important conventions of a thriller.


Lighting was also something we imputed in our thriller film to create a more dark yet realistic effect, this form of lighting was lowkey lighting which you can see in this extract of the antagonsit walking, you can tell the lights are on but it still seems a little dark and eery creating that tense effect, this effect also went well with the soundtrack at the time which had a building crescendo from a slow eery piece of music creating suspense. 
During the chase scene we used fast paced editing and a major crescendo and change in tone of the soundtrack, from something relatively slow to something much faster to emphasise that 'the chase is on' and to keep the audience with suspense not knowing if the protagonist will escape or if he will be captured or killed by the antagonist.
A good use of diegetic foley is also imputed when the antagonist stumbles into the cupboard door.

  

By Oscar Martin