develop or challenge forms and conventions...
During my entire research process I was paying extra attention to identifying any Thriller conventions that I would come across. To this end I have found a few conventions that every Thriller film uses, such as music to create an ambiance and tension with the audience. When we finally began filming the piece I was eager to use these conventions into the product. However I didn't want to just put something into the film just for the sake of having it there, so I was careful to keep the pace good and not include a random scene or idea that wouldn't improve the film and would only add time to the film which we had to squeeze down into only two minutes.
One of the most obvious conventions that we used was using music to create tension and set a mood in the piece. I believe that this is one of the main aspects of our film that makes it unique. The fact that there is not dialogue and is all simply music sets this film apart from the rest. I would say that we both use and develop this convention slightly because rather than only using it at specific points to raise tension we play music throughout the whole film. We could do this because we only had to make a 2 minute opening rather than a whole movie. The effect that I think this creates is an overarching sense of uneasiness throughout the entire opening that culminates at the very end.
Since there is not dialogue we found any sort of character building very difficult. We resorted to having to do this through costume and how they were presented in shots and camera angles, as well as how the acted on camera. To this end I had to try and pay extra attention to this and what conventions that I could possible employ. The costumes were designed to make the assassin look menacing. Everyone else in the film is wearing the same white shirt with a black tie. This is to really differentiate the assassin and make him stand our from the audience. We can almost instantly tell a lot about the assassin from when he first steps into frame, for example he is dressed is dark clothes that hide his face. This is a stark contrast to the bright white that everyone else is wearing, causing us to distrust the assassin almost instantly. This idea is a common convention in almost all forms of film. However some genres, such as mystery thrillers, love to challenge this convention and often use dress make the villain very inconspicuous. This was made obvious by the research I did. When we were thinking of sets we found it hard to play with any conventions while at the same time not causing the film to look cliched. To this end we chose to try and make the sets as natural as possible. This is a challenge the convention that a Thriller set should try to be particularly eerie with dark corners and dim lighting. We felt that if we made the sets too creepy then the film would become more of a horror film than a Thriller like we wanted. This is an example of a convention that we tried to challenge. I do feel that we could have done this better however, by using outside scenes or sets at night.
The music was designed and produced entirely by Matt Cornes. He had the experience and the tools to make it whereas we didn't. We chose to try and develop the convention of how music is used in thriller films. Generally, music is used at very specific points to try and raise tension. In my opinion this kind of spoils the surprise of a scare because when the music starts the audience will know something will happen soon. Some films challenge this convention by either having nothing scary happen or by simply only having music at the very last second before the scare actually happens. We chose a different way of challenging this convention by simply having the eerie music playing all the time. This way, an audience member wouldn't be able to expect anything to happen while at the same time creating a unique factor about our film.
I do think that we used enough good conventions to make our film effective, as well as challenging and developing others to craft a good experience as well as challenge ourselves.
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