Question 1

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

A thriller is a popular genre of film that uses as its core elements a high amount of suspense, tension and excitement. These elements are used in conjunction with a plot that tends to be very antagonist-driven; this means that the main character is usually pitted against an intelligent, resourceful and ruthless villain. In more than one occasion it could be argued that the better scripted and portrayed characters are the antagonists: this makes the protagonist seem outclassed by the antagonist and makes every encounter these characters have much more intense.
There are many sub-genres of thrillers as shown in this wordle.

Though all these sub-genres differ from each other they all have some conventions that define them as thrillers; some of these are:

•    Death is omnipresent in a thriller; usually the protagonist faces death or someone that they care about
•          The main storyline often has a mystery that must be solved for the events of the thriller to make sense.
•         A common element in thrillers is the presence of innocence in some of the characters, and the subsequent loss of innocence due to the events in the story.
•          The conflict between antagonist and protagonist must not be limited to a physical one but transcend into a mental one. This makes sure that the action is not only dominated by physicality, otherwise the story and action would become repetitive and stale.
•          Last, but not least, the story must consist of extraordinary events placed in an ordinary setting, this makes sure that the audience can relate to the events and realize that if certain conditions were to apply to their normal, day to day lives, they could find themselves in a similar situation.

Since we opted for a decisively retro style of plotline we decided to incorporate some of the more core, and therefore older, elements into the production: for example our killer is dressed in dark colours to symbolize his bad intentions.   

Moreover we had our victim dress in colourful colours that contrast with the killers and gives the impression of purity as opposed to anger, hate and cruelty.

On the other we have defied convention in some instances to make the storyline and the production in general seem more personal to us and more original in general. For example the entire production is based around the poem “Cousin Kate” by Christina Rossetti; this poem inspired our title and the themes of revenge, hatred and jealousy proved to be inspirational for the production of our thriller. This is a break from tradition because most of the time thrillers and other genres at large are based on more than one source of inspiration. Moreover the poem was also used as a voiceover during the production and further distances this thriller from the norm as it is unusual for a film of this genre to contain extracts of poetry.
On the other hand we have followed the typical conventions by inserting a common element into the production: this is the presence of flashbacks, this is one to give a sense of the back-story for the production; many thrillers use this technique such as Pulp Fiction (1994) and Annie hall (1977).

Other than flashback we made extensive use of fast editing and increased the diegetic sound, especially in the train sequences; this was done to hit the audience hard and to keep them riveted to the action going on.
This is shown very well in this shot:

This is the climactic ending to the chase sequence that ends with the killer knocking out the victim and tying her down to the train tracks.

For reference this sequence could be compared to the infamous bathroom scene in psycho.

Both these scenes use a close up of the killer while he/she delivers the blow; also in both cases the act of the killer is obscures and not easily seen.

Moreover the sound is also heightened during these sequences to make sure the audience is fully aware and focused on the action.