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

We decided to explore the conventions in thrillers and adapt them in our opening in the following ways:

1.The Title (location, typography and meaning) of the film:

We decided to call our film Red Marks in order to link the title to the location of the film - a school. The title suggests that death or injury will be present (red is associated with blood) whilst also being punning as the red marks could be associated with schoolwork, as well as the idea of a serial killer or a hitman. 

We used superimposition in our opening title in order to make it follow the conventions of a thriller, as we found many different 

Dexter is one of Showtime's most
successful products.

films such as Memento to use a similar technique in order to link to the themes associated with the film. We decided to use a custom font because after researching the impact of fonts, we found that we wanted ours to draw attention away from the simple close up that we used. In order to find a suitable font, we used dafont.com as we found there to be a lot of interesting fonts which we could use. The white colour would contrast against the red blood in the drain - an effect used in other thriller products such as Dexter, in order to show the importance of the blood being spilt.

2. The Setting/Location:

The majority of our thriller took place in empty school corridors, whilst the overall setting was a school. 

This allowed ease of access for us as we were able to limit the amount of light to a minimum which is conventional of thrillers such as Goodfellas or Shutter Island as it adds a sense of mystery. On the other hand, we used a bathroom with very bright artificial lighting in order to make the scene feel clinical, similar to American Psycho in order to make the scene creepy and uncomfortable. 

3. The Plot and characters:

This just indicates trouble...

Conventionally, we decided that an abandoned school would work well with our film. The idea of  isolation during the detention is very common in thrillers as it gives a sense of no escape and no help. We also limited the amount of characters which are seen in the opening sequence, giving a sense of closure, going along with the conventions. Our protagonist's face was  introduced near the end of the opening, adding to the sense of enigma, similar to The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. However, in order to contrast the conventional look of a serial killer, we decided to make ours a blonde female (more about that in this post). Our protagonist was introduced in a back shot, which is seen in other thrillers such as Donnie Darko - this is so that the sense of enigma is introduced from the very beginning of the film in order to keep the audience engaged. One of the most important characters in our thriller is the secret informer who messages the protagonist at the end of our opening. The idea of secrecy and anonymous is generic of thrillers, such as the Bourne series as it adds to the enigma of the dynamics of the plot. 

4. Camerawork, editing and sound:

Our group followed the conventions of a thriller in the technical aspect of the opening. Firstly, we used a lot of low tracking shots during the opening in order to make the school appear intimidating and mysterious. We also used a lot of closeups in our shots to limit what the audience can see, whilst also making them see detail which is crucial to the story, similar to Se7en. 


We used parallel editing throughout our opening, similar to The Silence of the Lambs, in order to create tension and to confuse the audience. This is rather conventional of thrillers - however we decided to use it in order to show two different time periods, rather than two different scenes. We thought that this would have more of an impact rather than a simple flashback, however I believe that we could've improved the composition of the shots to make them appear even more shocking. 

We also decided to make our soundtrack conventional of thrillers. During the beginning sequence, our soundtrack is minimal - the echoic ringing adds to the empty atmosphere of the corridors, whilst also creating a sense of enigma. However, during the 2nd corridor scene (with our protagonist) the music builds up to a crescendo - the piano creates a theme of grandeur, creating tension in the scene as the loud sound contradicts the calm mannerism of the blonde character. This is conventional of thrillers, however instead of using string instruments like violins, we decided to use the piano as we thought it would have more of an impact.