Question 1 - Tom

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

Conventions of thriller –

First the definitions of ‘thriller’ and to ‘thrill’,

‘Thriller – A novel, play, or film with an exciting plot, typically involving crime or espionage.’

‘Thrill – A sudden feeling of excitement..’

With these definitions in mind a Thriller film must contain these certain features that make it identifiable as a thriller. First it must be exciting and have an interesting plot. It can range a number of themes, where it can be either noire, action or crime or any other type.

However it cannot contain anything supernatural as this then is not classed as a thriller but a horror.

So therefore a Thriller needs to be tense and contain enigma, something that grabs your attention. It needs to have an exciting/interesting plot that will also create mood and atmosphere to add to the tension, this makes the consumers more immersed.

When researching other thrillers I found that they all contained various elements above that I mentioned.

Limitless –

Limitless is a good example of a thriller as even the opening has become one of the most famously recognized and creative intro's. The first shot is off a male character standing on the edge of a high rise building. This brings many questions up about who he is and what he is doing. This is a similar opening to our own thriller which we have the protagonists’ face covered in blood which starts raising similar questions just like Limitless.

Limitless also features normal looking objects in a normal setting which is known as iconography as then it then shows dead bodies scattered around the building. In our thriller we also used iconography to try and create more suspense as we wanted it to look more natural.

Limitless also uses restricted & unrestricted narration to further the story which we also used in our thriller to try and create more tension. One example of restricted narration is when the antagonist discovers that the protagonist is becoming suspicious of him and this is when the story starts to unfold.

Most thriller films tend to have a lot of cuts to keep the pace fast and build more tension, these also are usually joined with fast close ups of the protagonists face which can then also highlight the urgency of the situation they are in and therefore makes the audience interested in what is going on/going to happen.

To start creating questions and building suspense straight away we decided to use the ending at the beginning also known as foreshadowing. This makes the audience start asking questions and trying to figure out how it happened. 
For this we used our protagonist's scene once she had been beaten up.