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

The ideas and themes around the planning of our thriller came from a variety of thrillers from gangster heavy films and classic noir. When it came to the planning we would pick out things we liked about these films and even things we didn't like, then focused on trying to implement these things and avoiding them. in terms of editing, a main influence of the use of flash forwards came from Bourne Ultimatum, but throughout the film they use flash backs instead to create a sense of the character already being in that place, or remember things from his amnesia. The way the produce the flash backs i find to be very accurate with the shaky cam and the use of very heavy affects to make it look like a blur in his mind. The way his facial expressions are made were also a huge influence as it shows the struggle to remember and in our chase the sense of danger in the events to come. Bourne Ultimatum was definitely my biggest influence when it came to editing and so i wanted to pick out the details i loved most about how those films were made. Looking at the flash back the sound used from them is done in a very blurry background noise with key speeches and sounds that show he remembers more parts than overs. Taking that into consideration when it came to the flash forwards i used the sound of the crowbar being picked up as that is a very distinct sound from the actual clip. The thing i like about my flash forwards are that those shots after being show are actually played out later on.

When filming, some of our shots came out perfectly with the use of the natural sunlight in the area, for example when the protagonist pauses against a wall after being chased the lighting comes out very well against his face and the surrounding area. Filming this shot, we had no intentions of the lighting coming out like that because the place we filmed was under a car park and so the lighting coming in was a reflection from a puddle which made it strong and slightly rippling. The use of the lighting in both of these shots show the sort of bad sides to both of these character. For James Bonds (From Casino Royale) he's sitting in a pitch black room with only the light from a street light outside, its effective as it be seen as two sides to the character and for Bond its correct as he is seen as an anti-hero in the recent one. Taking this influence into ours, its shows that the character really is just an average teenager with a normal life, but from unfortunate circumstances has been pulled into a life of crime which leads to punishment and maybe death.

The best thing about our film is definitely the location as it just looks prefect for the mood, situation and genre. The dull colours and overload of grey concrete buildings looks great with the miserable cloudy sky aswell just made it a brilliant place to film. Researching through alot of thrillers gave us an idea of a common location for films like these and the one that caught our eye the most was Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. A large majority of the film is set in quite rundown and nasty looking areas like for example in the opening, with the two guys selling stuff down an alley, to then later be chased around near some industrial looking areas. the shot also fits with the fact that they are being chased into a dead of nothing but trouble, but in Lock Stock they get away. The two places look very similar with the puddles and dull colours, which is sort of what we were going for.