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

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

Our media product does not use the conventions of real media products, for example Vladimir Propp’s character types. This theory states of 8 types of characters in a typical film; The Hero, The Villain, The Princess, The Dispatcher, The Donor, The Helper, The Father and The False Hero. However, in our thriller project many of our characters defy this or even fall under two different categories. Our main characters (Jamie and Linden) would be expected to be the hero’s, on the other hand they break the law several times in the start of the film through underage drinking, driving under the influence of alcohol and man slaughter.  Also with our Villain, he transitions from being a victim of the 2 main characters stupidity to being the ruthless villain. Our thriller also rejects this previse by completely ignoring the other 6 character types and not including them in our production.

Our production also rejects Tvetan Todorov’s narrative theory around the structure of a thriller. This theory states that films start and end with a equilibrium. However our story starts at our most intense, suspenseful part, before a flash back occurs and the whole film is shown as a flash back. This remains until we catch up with the point where we started which is at the highest point of disequilibrium. The peaks between Equilibrium and disequilibrium throughout keep our film interesting and this is why we decided to reject the theory.

One theory that our thriller does agree with is Levi Strauss’ Binary oppositions. This theory states that all films work on a contrast between good and evil. Our thriller does agree with this theory as it is all about the battle between the two teenagers and the evil mysterious figure black mailing them into doing these disgusting acts of law breaking and violence.

As for the use of codes, the entirety of my thriller opening will be using an enigma/ Mystery code, this is because they will know of Lindens suicide and of Jamie’s horror towards this but they will not know of any details as to why he has done this. This will become clear in the full film and the enigma will be resolved. Incorporating action codes may be a little harder but will do this by a close up shot of Jamie tying his shoes laces and throwing on his coat, this will be an action code of Jamie getting ready to travel somewhere quickly. We will be using Semic codes in the form of smashed glass and empty pill packets, this will be a semic code for suicide and death which is the semantic field throughout our thriller opening. Code of opposition will be difficult to portray in our opening as the villain does not actually feature until much later on in the film. However, should he of featured we would portray this through the use of darker lighting and use of music, if he enters the scene, we would dim the lights and introduce a deep slow score of the top of the scene. This would be in contrast to when the young lads are in the scene where we would be using slow depressing music to give the audience a feeling of empathy towards the agonists in our opening.