1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our film opening sequence follows the forms and conventions of real opening sequences, but it also challenges and develops some of these conventions. ‘Remembrance’ is based around the genre of a psychological thriller; however it has aspects of horror due to the deaths of innocent people that will occur. We therefore constructed an opening sequence using some conventions of these genres to make it familiar and recognisable for the audience. However, we wanted to keep the genre mysterious to the audience until the end, when they get a shock. Our opening sequence follows the same form of most openings by Introducing the main character, Introducing the narrative, indicating the themes, including titles throughout, incorporating music and having a visual reference to the film title. The visual film reference consists of a rough, preliminary sketch of the ‘Preminition’.
Our opening sequence doesn’t follow the conventions of typical opening sequences; it has a unique twist. Throughout our opening sequence there are several hints as to the themes of our film which are similar to many themes of other thriller/horror films - things such as dangerous, psychological puzzle, thriller and hidden meaning. We chose this because it keeps our audience on the edge of their seats and constantly engaged.
Common in other psychological thrillers such as Memento (2000) the film centres on the theme of mental illness is a large part of our film as our central character has been affected mentally by his experiences and this clarifies his on screen actions. Memento is a American psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, This film is often used to show the distinction between plot and story. The film's events unfold in two separate, alternating narratives — one in color, and the other in black and white. We worked alongside the message sent out by the main character-instead of showing distinction between the plot we decided to show the character having split personallities.
This theme is also common in Psycho (1960) with Norman Bates who is psychologically affected shows similarities between our main character and plot.
Our film challenges the conventions of typical thriller movies to characterisation. The main character plays a hero and villain but in the eyes of society and everyone around him he’s seen as a villain as it seems he planned to destroy the world trade towers, but really he was just in a state of mind to see into the future. We make the audience feel sympathy for him at the start while he’s admitted to an insane asylum. The audience believe he’s mentally ill, but really its one of his split personalities kicking in. Affected deeply, it has made him unsettled and disrupted his life in other words he’s seen as a social outcast. We challenge forms and conventions of a typical thriller killing innocent people; we made a slight twist to show the character is actually normal depending on the state of mind he’s in.
We did not challenge conventions of a typical thriller/horror film because we incorporated scary music in the background of certain scenes-this was to keep suspense . Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller and Horror genres. However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre, in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre.Conventions of the sound devices are creative as the soundtrack is quite ominous, dark and depressing and resembles the heart beat in some parts. This tone of music is conventional of the thriller genre and is used to keep the audience on edge and build up the suspense.
We also challenge a lot of the conventions usually associated with a thriller to create interest among audiences. A main part is lighting as we had a dark setting in a office, props such as a lamp towering over the main character throughout the scene in the office helps recognise the them and teaches the audience who’s the main protagonist.
Our opening sequence follows a classic narrative pattern, showing the character waking up, getting ready and preparing for his evil actions that will follow in the rest of the film. Throughout our sequence there are indicators of disruption, such as the nightmare, the news broadcasting, the newspaper articles and images. Despite the fact that the character is doing everyday ordinary things such as waking up and sitting at a desk, it is edited in a way to make the audience feel insecure. This was common in thriller movies, where everyday circumstances are changed into a frightening situation, putting the audience on edge.
As our opening sequence follows a classic narrative pattern and is a linear sequence, similar to other real thriller film openings, we tried to stick to our continuity measures. Various camera and editing techniques were used in order to achieve this as effectively as possible such as transitions of fades and dissolves during the mains characters black out to convey a slight passing of time. We also shot the nightmare from varied angles and distances so that we could edit this together and present the idea of disorientation and make it quite jumpy for the viewer. Also the technique of blur helped show what the character was seeing at this present time.
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