Question 1- In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media products?

1. IN WHAT WAY DOES YOUR
MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP
OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?
By Fatima Abdi Mohamed

2. FEATURES IN THRILLER/DRAMA
FILMS!
• While conducting my research I had grasped knowledge about codes and
conventions of thriller/drama genres since our film is going to based on
those genres. In my research, I had found out that the most common
codes and conventions amongst thriller/drama genre is that isolated
setting. The reason why isolated setting are are used majority of the
time is due to the atmosphere it builds and this intrigues the audience
further in to the film. Other common features of thriller/drama codes
and conventions involve: lots of tense music, diegetic sound of breathing
and montage of shots in a fast pace, low key lighting, quick cuts,
shadows, changes in the angle of shots, black and white shots,
protagonist is in the mercy of the antagonist, mobile phones, alcohol and
drugs. We have not really challenged the features of thriller/drama genre
due to the fact that we were trying to attract people who liked the typical
codes and conventions of thriller/drama genre.

3. TITLE
• Our film is called ‘Offline’ and the film name helps the
audience have an idea on what our storyline contains and
have the knowledge that some type of technology is involved.
The dictionary definition of ‘Offline’ is ‘not controlled by or
directly connected to a computer or the Internet’ and the
audience can link the name of the film to the literally
meaning of the word. Furthermore, there is an increasing
trend of thriller/drama films where the name of the film
clues the audience on the type of film they would be catching
as the title and the plot of the film correlate together.
Another insight I had developed while researching
thriller/drama films is that fact that the film titles are made
with only one word mostly, because it has more impact and
suspense and the audience are more likely to remember it.
Our tagline for our film is’ Offline is always a reality’, the
reason we chose that tag line is the fact that the audience
can be clued in on the storyline of the film and it has a
lasting impact because it sounds sinister and thrilling.

4. LOCATIONS
• The location we had chosen correlated with the storyboards that we
had chosen. The first location was Hammersmith Broadway, where
the majority of the time is fully packed. This helped us conceal the
antagonise well and make the audience indifferent to the situation
at hand. The second location was a deserted ark and this fit in well
with the codes and conventions of thriller/drama genre. Our third
location was an abandoned alleyway and this another common
feature of a thriller/drama film and it also follows the codes and
conventions of a thriller/drama genre. Our last location is the
protagonist house, where she acts distress and paranoid, tis is also a
common theme of a thriller/drama genre. Most of the locations we
chose links to the thriller/drama genre and the end result was for the
audience to feel the suspense and tension building up in the
atmosphere after each scene in each different location.

5. OPENING SCENE
• Opening sequence in normal thriller/drama films either begin with a serine
scene where everything is normal or a scene where the drama starts of on a
high note. Our film trailer begins with a sinister person standing in the
shadow, then it continues in a 5 second flashback montage to the actual
beginning of the film where the original first scene begins. The first scene
consists with the main character Abigail talking to her friend Amanda on
the phone while surfacing the internet. The opening sequence of the film
portrays a normal life of a University student and that’s our aim. During
the research period we had looked at many different types of trailers and
the best trailers that stood out to us contained flash backs and montages.
We had followed the codes and conventions of an opening sequence for
thriller/drama genre by begin it slowly and escalating it gradually to build
up tension

6. POSTER
• Our film posters main feature is the eye of our antagonist
with the protagonist in the pupil. While conducting our
research we found out that the best way to have a huge
impact on the audience due to the film poster is to make it
stand out and do something unique and we had achieved
that. Most of the posters we had viewed had a slight trend
going with colour schemes throughout the whole poster.
Our film poster followed the colour scheme Black, Gold
and White. All those three colours work well together
making our film poster stand out. We had used the film
poster ‘Gone’ as a template to where we were going to place
the main character in our film poster. We had followed the
codes and conventions of a poster which include: the film
title, the tagline, an image, the release date, the credits
and some review.

7. MAGAZINE
• Our magazine design is inspired by other Empire
magazines hence the magazine company we went with in
the end. The main colour scheme we used for our magazine
is White, Red and the reason we chose theses' colours is
because they are uniformed together and stand out against
the black background. We had noticed that the magazine
Empire normally follows two colour schemes because its
easier to follow for the audience, rather than having a
magazine cover where there the colour scheme is countless
and too busy. The image on the front of our magazine cover
will hold the audiences attention because if you look
closely, there's more than one person on the front of the
cover. The second persons face is covered and that
challenges codes and conventions of a magazine since every
featured person’s face needs to be visible. We had the
normal codes and conventions of a magazine which
involved: release dates, barcodes, features, images and
taglines of our move.

8. TRAILER
• W had tried to follow the codes and convention of Thriller/drama
genres while creating our trailer, which is why he had multiple
montages and scenes where transitions like flash is used to make
the trailer more dramatic and tense. We also had to follow codes
and convention of trailers which included: montages, cuts of
scenes, title, release date, tagline, credits of company names and
music. Our trailer runs for 2 minutes and 36 seconds which also
follows conventions of a trailer since its not too long. We had
inspiration from other movie trailers like Paranoid and X-man
Apocalypse since they used multiple montages and dramatic
music.