In what ways does your media product use, develop, challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

Ascendancy is a psychological thriller that was created with the influences of various other media products, as well as challenging certain thriller conventions. Various products inspired the media film resulting in specific choices when deciding on elements of the film such as costume, lighting, camerawork, mise-en-scene and various other film elements.

For the costumes used in the thriller film we decided to use the convention of the antagonist typically wearing smart clothing, this was decided for the particular scene where the girl that the antagonist has killed is lying in the bath. We chose the smart clothing as an attempt to recreate a funeral that the antagonist held for the girl he has murdered. This smart clothing came from the inspiration of the psychological/horror/thriller ‘American Psycho’ in which the psychotic character ‘Patrick Bateman’ .The colours of the costumes were not selectively chosen as we knew the film was going to be edited as a black and white film and therefore choosing particular colours would not have an effect within the film.

Costume

Mise-en-scene and Location

We chose to film an important scene in a bathroom with the inspiration from the film ‘The Shining’ in where a bathroom is used within a very chilling scene. I believe using a bathroom for a scene within a thriller film clearly conforms to the genre as there are various famous scenes in which a bathroom is used in a thriller, such as ‘Psycho’ . Therefore we aimed to use the bathroom to connote specific thriller conventions. We also chose to film in a bedroom for another one of our scenes. This was a choice made to once again conform to the thriller convention as many common thriller and horror films use bedrooms within a particular scenes. The bedroom is used to make the character seem vulnerable as commonly we associate bedrooms as a personal space and when this is being invaded it creates tension and suspense. Such as in the film ‘Paranormal Activity’ the bedroom is used to automatically create a sense of false-security.

Props

The props in the thriller film play an important role within the plot, firstly we use The Bible in various scenes as a prompt to the audience that the antagonist has connections with religion. The Bible is to suggest to the audience that the antagonist is being controlled by a religious cult group and therefore plays a crucial role within the plot of the film. The use of the Bible prop is used to present the cult symbol which we designed and drew onto the back of it. This symbol came from the inspiration of the film ‘Kill List’ which is based heavily on the idea of cult groups and the power they have and the dark, evil crimes they commit.

Lighting

When filming inside we used mostly low key lighting to create a chiaroscuro effect which came from the inspiration of film noir, which therefore challenges the forms of the thriller convention. Even though some thriller films also use low-key lighting to create suspicion and fear, we were not following this particular thriller convention instead we chose to use low key lighting in response to the lighting used in various film noir’s.

Characters

The vulnerability of the female character and the psychopathic unstable male character conform to the thriller convention. There are various thriller films which use this combination of character type. For example in the film ‘Cape Fear’, which involves the antagonist carrying out several disturbing crimes with vulnerable, innocent women.

Camerawork

Tracking shots are commonly used to build suspense and tension in thriller films which inspired the choice to use a tracking shot in our thriller. In the film ‘Children of Men’ Alfonso Cuaron chooses to use tracking shots throughout which prove to be very effective in keeping the audience engaged with what is happening on screen. Although this particular tracking shot used in Cuaron’s film ‘Children of Men’ is used in one of the final scenes of the film, we have chosen to use a tracking shot as the opening shot to our thriller. But with the same attention of grabbing the full attention of the audience. It grabs the audience’s attention by creating the anticipation of not knowing what’s going to happen next as we are placed directly behind the character and therefore are blocked from viewing what the character sees.