1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
SETTING AND LOCATION
In deciding location, we looked at thrillers and their main themes in relation to their characters; thrillers that have solitary protagonists tend to include the theme of isolation through locations and setting as well as other aspects of the production. When it came to deciding what train stations we would use, we liked the idea of a deserted, badly taken care of and open-platformed station that would translate the alienated feeling in it. We knew already of some train station in the areas we live in and chose between some which were more appropriate for the location. If you look back at the decision post about it (click here), you'll see what were the deciding factors for each stations and how we thought they would set the theme. We developed this idea of a spaced, isolated location from the opening of Brick (2005), where the protagonist is seen crouching alone in a deserted tunnel gazing at nowhere. We thought this would look visually more descriptive and would also establish the genre better, which is similar to thriller films but also challenge the conventional ideas as it establishes character more than what the rest of the production will entail.
TITLE AND FONT
For 'Hunting Innocence's title we are going to use the font '28 Days Later' found by me in the website http://www.dailyfreefonts.com/. I found this font when looking for font-types that suit film credits and film titles, and found this style which is inspired by the style of font used in the thriller film 28 Days Later (2002). Me and my partner think that this really matches the atmosphere of the happenings in the film. The 'drags' between the letters reminds us of the fast movements trains, like the ones we see in the very beginning of the opening sequence. The stark white and against the black, paired with the font, helps to set the tone of the film; edgy and shocking, aspects that should be present in a good thriller. In some ways it does take the same principles from fonts used in modern thrillers, but I thought in order to make the genre clearer to the audience it would be more appropriate to do it the same ways as most thriller films. I suppose to answer this question, this is a conventional style of thriller films so we didn't really develop from the idea as we needed it to be similar so the audience could distinguish the genre easier.
COSTUMES AND PROPS
Costumes and props are present in all films and are therefore typical film conventions; but since our opening was only going to feature one protagonist, all costumes and props were for her. In order to show Abby, our protagonist, as someone who doesn't belong and that is a bit of a loner, she is wearing a bright red coat which makes her stand-out from all the ordinary passer-bys.
CHARACTERS
The conventional introduction of characters in most media products is by the establishment of the protagonist at the beginning of a film. When the audience establishes who is the protagonist then they know that the other characters in the storyline are in relation to the storyline because of the protagonist. To establish about the protagonist however, it is done through various aspects of the film; for example in our opening since we don't have any lines we presented her loneliness through the location she was seen in. Showing protagonists in the opening of films straight away is typical of films, this can be seen in many films and it is present in one of our many influences: Brick (2005).
SPECIAL EFFECTS
For our chose genre, big special effects are rarely seen. Specially because more thrillers in general tend to have a more realistic tone to them as they are supposed to "thrill" the audience in a more realistic level. There are sub-categories to thrillers which do not need to be realistic but are still regarded as thrillers such as psychological thrillers or supernatural thrillers, for example The Forgotten (2004) . These sub-categories are the ones with more special effects because they tend to be about non-real things and storylines; but crime thrillers, such as Eastern Promises (2007) and drama thrillers (ours) have to appeal to the audience in a more realistic atmosphere in which they can relate to and recognise so they do tend to need the help of special effects.
CAMERA WORK AND EDITING
Depending on the type of thriller genre, shots and their lengths differ. It is conventional of action, supernatural, psychological and generally past-paced thrillers to have shorter and faster shots to create effective suspense for the audience's perspective. However, we challenged this convention and in order to create a more silence suspense for the audience we decided to elongate takes to leave the audience wondering what is going to come next.
THE TITLE, STORYLINE AND OPENING
Conventional drama thriller's titles really vary. There are titles which relate to something specific of the storyline such as Brick (2005) - relating to the Brick that was in fact the whole reason behind the murder of the protagonist's girlfriend, or others that relate to the storyline more as a hint rather than something that is existent which is like The Forgotten (2004) and Eastern Promises (2007). "Hunting Innocence" relates to the Abby's life as she is being hunted by her family's affair which she had no idea existed, suggesting that the innocence she helped was all that was keeping her safe and now that she knew, everything was in danger. This is much like Easter Promises' title as represents an important ideal of the storyline, rather than something we definitely know what it means such as The Forgotten - which is representative of the children no one remembers, making them the forgotten.
GENRE
We challenged what we knew of the thriller genre to create as much of its essence in our opening as we could; saddening and monotone music, duller and darker colour scale and the use of the voice-over are all aspects which are present in modern drama thrillers, and therefore the combination seemed appropriate. They are all conventional of the genres, but we challenged these attributes by increasing them up a notch since we only had about 2 minutes of film to prove the genre, so we added the elongated takes and the heart-beat in order to help the genre be even clearer.
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