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

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

 

Title – ‘Vanished’ one word title is more gripping and easily memorable, it links to our film as the plot focuses around the sudden disappearance of a young girl. It links to the conventions of real media products such as Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ or ‘Jaws’, one of the most recognized thrillers, even today from Spielberg. The title name must be strong and distinctive but also have a link to the film genre and plot. Our genre being crime thriller minimized our options for titling our film with a less generic name. ‘Vanished’ although simplistic and slightly generic, holds strong focus on the disappearance of something, this is an attractive quality to an audience as a mystery requires a challenge.

 

Location- the two locations we used link specifically to genre and plot of our film, due to it being a crime  thriller. The isolation of the beach and the grey dull landscape the Norfolk coastline displays made a perfect atmosphere for a disappearance because of the separation from civilisation. Our other location was a police station which links to the conventions of a crime thriller as it is a setting of investigation and questioning, it also can be used as an area for manipulation due to the psychological dissolution part of the psychological genre.

 Our plot challenges the typical conventions of many previous thriller films, as the enemy or antagonist within out film is a trusted member of the family. We used some of Hitchcock’s conventions within our film narrative because alike to him we believe that “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it”, therefore we assembled a plot which forced the audience to question the characters they are supposed to trust, which in this case are the mother and father of a young girl. The narrative events that take place mislead the audience including a suspected murder and a false investigation as a red herring. The stock characters include Olivia, the missing child, and the police detective. These typical conventions of a Psychological crime thriller contrast with the ambiguity in our opening as we manipulate the audiences typical assumptions of what would occur next in the plot, using suspense over surprise, as Hitchcock also typically does.

We use mis en scene to add emphasis to the conventions of a typical crime thriller due to the use of props, costume and colouring. A like to the colouring in David Fincher’s ‘Gone Girl’, also a misleading psychological thriller, we used lurid yellow tones and dull beiges to reflect a façade of happiness. This is because a like to the parent’s role stereotypically offering safety and stability, this is also a façade as they are in fact the ones who are potential threats. In ‘Gone Girl’ a similar colour lighting is used to insinuate their generic lifestyle and façade of a happy marriage.