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

1. The Title -

'Forever Hold Your Piece' mirrors our story-line, the title also reflects on the theme of time and death. The significance of time is explored through the protagonist's role of being an assassin is to 'forever' be armed. There is a double meaning of 'piece' which is symbolic of their weapon, and also a representation of the protagonist wanting that peace that they had been brought into the world. The use of the title giving the audience an idea to what the plot may be. This is very popular in real media products because it assures the audience to what they want to see, in Se7en the seven deadly pictures gives the audience a hint to the theme of death and addiction.                                                                  

2. Location/Setting -

We chose an isolated setting for the first half of the opening sequence to present the daily life of an assassin, and to keep their identities as a secret from society.

However, for the second half of the sequence, we chose more of an open space to show our protagonists way out of his daily job, and the mission to quit, and to hold onto that peace they once had.

3. Costumes/Props -

Like many thrillers, the costumes are always classy for the protagonist, in popular-culture a suit is symbolic of power, and power leads to danger. Our protagonist was to follow in the footsteps of other sleek powerful assassins/criminals. I researched into the effects of clothing in a thriller.
In Goodfellas, Henry Hill is wearing a suit with the first few buttons always open which is symbolic of his power, and also that he is a man of that era. Thrillers have now continued to the protagonist wearing a suit with the buttons closed showing they are private, and stylish for the appropriate era.
The colour grey represents a between point between light and dark, whereas the shirt being black is symbolic of always being isolated, and also isolating himself from society because of occupation.

 

4. Camerawork -

Thrillers conventionally use lots of close-ups to hide details from the audience, or highlight certain details. We used close-ups in the first section to create questions around who the character is and what he is doing. I did a product research on media forms that hide details like Dexter.

5. Editing -

For our editing we developed on the use of fast editing by having fast editing in the first half of the opening, and a more steady paste on the second half of the opening. This effects the narrative of our thriller because we wanted to show two perspectives of our protagonist, and the audience would recognize this.

6. Title font and style -

Our title font was bold and clear but, we had a strike through it to challenge the title 'Forever Hold Your Piece' as it is not possible to forever hold something, which made it quite clever, and also it involves the audiences minds to interact with the visuals and get the pun presented.. We challenged real media products as they do not really play with the title to create a hidden humor like our title did. 

7. How the protagonist is introduced - 

Our protagonist is not introduced stereotypical just like any other thriller where the face is not shown not till after the title but, we show the face before the title rolls in. We decided upon this because the audience always expects to see the face of the protagonist after the titles to get them in the mood of the film. We thought showing the face before the title will engage the audience even more.