Thriller analysis.

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

My thriller ‘Caesar’ was greatly inspired by the film ‘This Is England’ although not a thriller itself its gritty reality matches the context in our thriller. The characters in our thriller also link to those in ‘This Is England’ for example Caesar in our Thriller links to Milky in ‘This Is England’ Caesar also challenges the generic conventions because he is a coloured young male who is the victim of the middle aged white racist who is the villain in our thriller, our villain again links to ‘This Is England’ because our character of Brutus reflects the qualities of ‘Combo’. Our film also challenges the conventions because instead of using a claustrophobic area we used a forest which was open and different, this links to ‘Seven’ because at the end detective Somerset and Mills are in a desert which is wide open. The costumes we chose for our characters convey their personalities and ambitions, for example Caesar was dressed in a shirt and black trousers with a white over coat, he wore these because we wanted to show him to be a well presented man who is trying to do well for himself in life, the white jacket also worked well with the camera because it was easy to see. The father Brutus’s costume was more casual with a camouflage jacket, symbolising his love and commitment to the army and connoting his murderous instinct. The daughter’s costume was simple with black coat, leggings and shoes to symbolise her femme fatale characteristics, she also had a pink scarf connoting her innocence and her lack of knowledge for her fathers envy.

The mise-en-scene connotes the gritty lifestyle, for example the dark damp street, lined with council houses shows their surroundings to be a working class estate, claustrophobic surroundings. When Brutus is in the bathroom with all the memories playing over in his mind his surroundings are cramped and ordinary showing that he is a normal father who’s over protective side got the better of him. I used the reflections of the fathers face to show his regret because he looks very upset and alone, because we used a point of view shot of his reflection in the mirror it gives a sense of looking through the killers eyes making the audience feel a false sense of security. Also when Caesar is attacked by Brutus, the camera again shows a point of view shot, but this time it is from Caesar’s point of view. When I edited this scene I slowed down the camera as Caesar spins round this creates suspense for the audience, I also slowed down the attack of Brutus so that the audience got a good look at his face showing his anger which would make the audience feel uneasy.

Although my thriller shares similarities with ‘Seven’ because Detective Somerset is a black man who is on the good side just as Caesar is, our film is very different because ‘Seven’ is a more glamorous gritty thriller, this contrasts with my thriller because of the total gritty concept and lack of glamour throughout. The thriller ‘The Third Man’ uses completely different conventions to my thriller, although one of the scenes is a chase through the gritty underground of Vienna between the characters this is the only scene with any relation to my thriller because the rest is a lot more glamorous. Because ‘The Third Man’ was filmed in 1949 for example to role of women are seen to be like dolls, although the role of women is very small compared to the role of ‘Anna’ in ‘The Third Man’ our woman character isn’t as pristine and doll like. Carole Reed uses a great number of people and police in his thriller which again contrasts mine because there are only three characters with simplistic roles.

I’ve developed the thriller conventions by keeping a cliff hanger at the end of the title sequence, this keeps the audience’s attention and means they want to see the rest of the film because they want to know what happens to all the characters and they want to know if Caesar survives and gets revenge. In the opening scene to ‘Seven’ we aren’t left with much of a cliff hanger so my film contrasts this, however we do want to keep watching the rest of ‘Seven’ because we are intrigued just as the audience of my thriller should be.