Q1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the

forms and conventions of real media products?

(What themes and conventions make your film a Thriller?)

• There are themes running all the way through our Thriller film OTS that are common themes of other Thrillers.

• For example, the board scene:– We filmed a board of which the

main antagonist uses to keep track of the gangs and plot against them.

– The board consists of newspaper clippings and photos from newspapers.

– We found this idea to be typical of Thriller films.

– Although we are introduced to the protagonists with them doing their days in a scene the antagonist stays incredibly secretive.

– Throughout the OTS all we ever see is their hand.

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• Click on any of the screen shots in the grid of our OTS to see what aspect the shot represents of the Thriller genre:

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• The Title of the film:– Holly pitched us the title KEEP SIX

after finding it on the internet.– It means to hang back and watch

out for somebody when they are going into a dangerous situation.

– For example it can be in an illegal transaction like a drug deal or it could be while conducting an armed robbery.

– This is typical of Thrillers and fits very well into what our film is about.

– The title is also about looking out for others, KEEPING SIX is very much when you are surrounded by others. This reflects back to our initial idea of our gang being like a family who watch out for each other.

– This is a theme that runs through the film and separates the protagonists from the antagonist because the antagonist has no one, whereas the gang members have each other.

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• Setting/Location– The setting and location of our film is

very much centred around an estate like area.

– An area that is rather deprived and in need of development.

– This screenshot of a scene actually works quite well, if you imagine Holly (our second protagonist) is from the estate with the gang then she is looking out on a world that holds better opportunities and a better quality of life.

– You can see the schools where some of the gang members might have dropped out and the college where many of the gang members would not have even got into.

– This is a theme that runs through our film, that the gang members have dreams of their own, especially the leaders who desire a better life.

– We are introduced to Holly simply looking out on this world and although we only get a glimpse of this other world outside gangs, it would always be there throughout the film.

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• Costumes and props– The costumes we used were

Hooded jumpers, trainers, and baggy jeans.• Hooded jumpers are a very

common in gangs and it worked very well for us as to keep it realistic we wanted our actors to stay as secretive as possible.

– For props we used cigarettes, watches and mobile phones.• Here we see only Holly’s

hands rolling a cigarette. • There is a lot of hand

movement in this scene which makes it more interesting.

• This is typical of Thrillers as at the start you rarely see the face of a person immediately, you may see the back of their head and their hands to make them seem secretive but interesting.

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• Camerawork & editing– Through filming our OTS we tried to involve

as much clever camera work and editing as possible.

– This shot was the very start of our montage of newspaper clippings.

– It is a shot of a light bulb switching on and off.

– Filming:• I filmed a range of shots from different angles of

the light bulb turning on and off.• I started by filming the light bulb face on turning

on, the screen was pitch black before it turns into an incredibly bright blur before adjusting into focus.

• I felt this camera work looked good as it confused the viewer, it unsettles them, they are not quite sure what they are looking out until they are given another shot of the light bulb turning on from a different angle.

– Editing:• When it came to editing, Jack and I wanted to try

to fit in every possible shot of the board we could, anywhere we could.

• We wanted the shots to somewhat startle the viewer, the shots of the board could never become familiar.

• At points we sped up the shots and cut them so you would only get a glimpse of the headlines like ‘DANGER’, single words that are sprung on you just long enough to take in.

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• Title font & style– We found the title font on Dafont.com, we

had the idea of the title looking good but at the same time looking simple and bold.

– We had trouble finding our font as every style we looked at was either too complicated or too boring.

– We did not want to font to be too complicated as we wanted it to surprise the viewer and come out of nowhere at the end of the OTS.

– It needed to look gang style, a sort of graffiti font.

– We all liked our final font, it was bold, simple and yet had a very particular style to it, it was the perfect gang/graffiti style.

– Once we had our font Holly was going to print it on a T shirt and we were going to film the back of the T-shirt at the end of the OTS.

– I was always a bit sceptical about whether the T-shirt idea would work, I worried that it might not stand out enough on the back of a T-shirt and whether the printing would be good quality.

– But, once we filmed it I thought it looked very good on screen and worked very effectively as our main title shot.

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• Story & how the OTS sets it up:– We wanted our story to

remain a bit of a mystery in our OTS, all we wanted to give the viewers were subtle clues as to the films narrative.

– We leave it up to the viewers imagination to decide what is going to happen.

– The drug deal scene I feel played a huge part in giving away that this was a Thriller about gangs and gang life.

– The only thing that may make viewers think otherwise are the intercuts of the board scene that may make viewers think it is a police Thriller.

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• Genre & how the OTS sets it up:– The genre is much clearer

than the story, as a whole we try to make the OTS feel unsettling, especially with the fast shots of the newspaper board intercut throughout.

– Newspaper clipping boards we felt were quite typical of Thriller films, that idea of a very secretive antagonist of which we do not reveal.

– It is also fairly clear that this is a gang film, the gang members are much more frequent on screen, making drug deals and living gang lives.

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• How characters are introduced:– We introduced Holly our

female gang leader with a sot of her head coming into frame.

– We do not reveal her face immediately as we wanted to give the viewers subtle clues as to who her character is with her actions.• She is wearing a hoody to

indicate she is in a gang.• She is smoking to obviously

show this character smokes.• She checks her watch to show

us she may be in a rush and might be a busy character, indicating she may be a leader of some kind with a lot of responsibility.

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• Special Effects– Lastly the special effects were mostly down

to editing but we were able to involve this shot Jack filmed by accident trying to adjust the camera focus, we felt it looked good on screen so kept it.

– During editing we added in multiple special effects. Jack came up with the idea of putting the newspaper clippings board shots over our other shots, like two clips in one that fade in and out.

– Another effect we added was speeding up and slowing down our clips and reversing our clips. We felt this effect made the footage flow better with the soundtrack, for example the shot we filmed of the bus stopping we edited so it went backwards and forwards in time with the music.

– The only problem we had to try to avoid was making our OTS too much like a music video.

– The way we were editing our footage made the soundtrack a very dominant part of our OTS which would turn it into a music video.

– After feedback about this we decided to focus less on making our footage flow with our music and more about making our footage flow as an OTS.

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