Media Evaluation question 1

 To open the thriller sequence, we have used a medium close-up of our Protagonist, along with a voiceover, which sets up the point of narrative straight away. This is quite common in the openings of thriller films. For example, at the beginning of Nolan’s film Memento (shot shown above) a medium close-up is shown which also establishes who the protagonist and also has a voiceover playing over the footage like ours does.

 Conventionally, we have used a blacked-out background and low-key lighting to create an enigma as soon as the footage is shown. The fact that a shadow is created is another convention of a thriller film. An inscrutable tone is developed because the audience doesn’t have the faintest clue of who this character is

and his whereabouts; we applied this technique to entice the audience as early in the film as possible. 

In this shot, we have established the location of the scene, the location being the Protagonist’s house. In a lot of thriller films, I had noticed that the location is revealed very early on in order for the audience to comprehend where the action is taking place. We applied this medium long shot of the Protagonist leaving his house to develop the prospective of the narrative.

In this scene we have challenged conventions of real media products by creating a rather unusual shot that an audience wouldn’t normally see. We employed a long shot from out of the same window that was shown in the previous scene to develop the mysterious mood of the sequence and to also show that the character that was on the drive before had now gone. Also, when choosing our titles, we decided to fade them onto the footage, rather than showing them on a black screen, which wouldn’t keep the audience engaged as effectively. The fact that the titles fade on and off the screen conveys the idea of the Protagonists mind drifting and not being stable. Additionally,

the fading of the titles onto the screen adds more continuity and flow to the opening sequence.

Conventionally, we used framing to create suspense and to make the narrative comprehensible by showing the audience that the antagonist is always stalking and lurking around the main character. In this shot, we framed our antagonist in the background slightly to the right in order to convey his mysteriousness. However, we framed the Antagonist as far away to the Protagonist as possible so it isn’t clear for the audience to distinguish his characteristics  

Regarding the titles, we created a white title on top of a black background to insinuate the notion of good vs. evil, which is a theme in our film and is very common in other thriller films. We have created the title so it glows, as shown on the two screenshots above. The reason for this is that we wanted to emphasise the state of the Protagonist’s mind and the instability of it. Also, the fact that the title glows and the font becomes thicker, creates immediate suspense and will engross the audience further in the film.

When editing we applied a filter over the footage to show that the action that is being shown is a flashback. We used a flashback because it is conventional of thriller films and a very useful technique to portray a narrative. One example of a thriller film that contains flashbacks is called The Butterfly Effect (picture shown above), which is also a psychological thriller and has a filter over the shot like ours. Also, the filter makes the action look quite scary therefore building tension, which is what we have aimed to do through these flashbacks.