Evaluation Question 1

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

• Our media product 'Abduction' in the form of a two minute opening sequence to a thriller uses and adopts various codes and conventions of other traditional thrillers by using representations, continuity location and music. Our group decided to try a different idea and go along the line of stereotypes and a twist that fools the audience into thinking one person is the antagonist based on stereotypes of ethnicity and the twist surprises the audience as in fact a white female is the antagonist. This is designed to create suspense and tension to keep our audience on the edge of their seat. We knew that this could also be a possible risk as we didn’t want to totally confuse our audience at the same time as they wouldn’t be able to understand the story line, thus creating an unsuccessful opening to a thriller. The sub-genre of Abduction is action or psychological thriller. The idea of a women being kidnapped into a human trafficking gang is a concept from a real media product in the form of ‘Taken’ a notable thriller which revolves around the storyline of somebody being kidnapped (see fig 1) . However I thought the idea was very basic and we wanted to expand that idea for the opening sequence. So we entwined that with a concept of stereotypes as in many typical thrillers the black male would be perceived as a thug/criminal, so when a black male is chasing a white female you would immediately think he is a mugger. When he hands her the book . We did some research and found out that the antagonist found in Thrillers are generally young to middle aged men. Abduction conflicts with gender because women are not normally seen as the antagonist. This is because men are portrayed as being more powerful and dominant.

• Another media product that had an influence on our thriller was ‘1 Day’ (see fig 2). 1 Day is a British gangster thriller, we used this as an influence when thinking of costume ideas and stereotypes when creating Jerome’s character. In the thriller it uses the stereotypes of young black males and portrays them as criminal, thug-like vandals. We wanted this conception of Jerome at the beginning of the thriller so the audience will follow the stereotype based on his clothing, mannerisms and ethnicity and throw them off of the real antagonist in Betty. Being a thriller we still tried to stick to some of the typical conventions you would associate the genre with. In all thrillers you find there are plenty of close up shots to convey emotion and build suspense and tension. We used close up shots in abduction to create the same affect, you can see a close up shot on the protagonist Sophie (see fig 3) when she is being chased down the alley.

• The reason why I chose to use the alley as the main location, is because we could have easily filmed our opening to a thriller in and around the college but the alleyway gives a connotation of isolation and dangerousness which are widely known conventions of thriller locations. If you look at many thrillers they use isolated locations to add to dramatic effect and the vulnerability of the antagonist. Also as, Sophie is being chased into the alley it adds to the audiences expectation that she is going to be hurt.
  
  
  
  Figure 1
  Taken is a thriller which uses a similar concepts to ours as a young female is kidnapped and put into human trafficking by big gangs and organisations.
  
  
  
  Figure 2
  1 Day is a British gangster thriller/drama based in Birmingham. We wanted to create the same preconceptions for our character Jerome that are created for the characters in ‘1 Day‘. They used costume language and mannerism to create stereotypes of the gangs, this helps to lead the audience into thinking these are the antagonists.
  
  See '1 Day' trailer.
  
  Figure 3
  This is a close up shot of Sophie, this shows how we have used close up shots which are typical conventions you find in a thriller.