1) In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media project uses some of the forms and conventions we have come to expect from thriller films. The first of these conventions being frequent action. Our film doesn't have that much action, rather a dramatic buildup to a climatic conclusion. This is because we have a limited time to film an opening to a film. As it is the opening, we can't have too much action as we needed to focus on the plot and building the suspense. If we were to make a whole movie we would include a lot of action.
The second aspect of a thriller is fast pacing. Fast pacing is used to make the film seem quicker and make it appear so that a lot happens in a vey short space of time. Our thriller opening is fast paced to a certain extent. This is because, again, we decided to focus on the building of suspension and the tension and drama. Another important feature is that the characters are smart and resourceful. Smart and resourceful characters make the plot more dangerous. However, we didn't have enough time to tell the audience that the characters are smart. This is why we decided to use a mask and black clothing to tell the audience quickly that this is a dangerous character who needs to be feared. Furthermore, we made it obvious that the intruder was driven and dedicated to murdering his target by using the collage. This showed planning and precision in choosing the target. The fact we have a driven villain makes it scarier as there is nothing scarier than a villain that has nothing lose. Along with the thriller conventions, there are some added characteristics that make a thriller more interesting. These consist of: a red herring, a cliffhanger and suspense. As stated before, suspense is one of the things we focused the most on. This is because it is what makes the audience feel like they are apart of the film. We included a cliffhanger at the end. This is because we want the audience to feel scared for the protagonist. Furthermore, we want them to feel like they have to keep watching to find out what happens. The last thing to include was a red herring. We chose not to include a red herring because the screen time we had was limited. In hindsight, we would've included someone knocking on the door, or the wind blowing something over that scared the protagonist, this would've, again, added to the suspense of the film and made it eve more dramatic when the villain attacks at the end.

Here is a comparison of the villain in our project and one of the most common villains of all time, Jason. As you can see, the hockey mask is used fairly commonly as a villainous prop. this is because it hides the persons face which adds an era of mystery to the character. It is in fact this mystery which most viewers find scary.

Similarly, the kidnapping itself is reminiscent of a scene in "taken 2" in which the actor gets kidnapped using a bag. Our thriller does this in a more abrupt fashion in order to scare the audience. In the scene in taken it is just used to the character doesn't know how to trace the kidnappers. 

Furthermore, we decided to incorporate the theories of Tzvetan Todorov. This theory suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure, where they begin at the state of equilibrium in which everything is in balance. Then something or someone has to come along to disturb the equilibrium. Finally, the equilibrium must be restored or a new equilibrium is formed.