Evaluation pt. 1 & 2- Shelby

We used imagery as our convention to show the audience the genre of our film. Our first convention in the film is that there is a male kidnapper in the film and a female victim which is typically seen in a thriller film. The shots at the beginning of the film show that he is not just a normal man in a basement, he is clearly planning something. You could see from the rusty tools in the basement around the kidnapper, the way he is scribbling out notes and the darkness of the environment that he is unusual.


 For the full film we were going to have a change in convention when a woman is the saviour of the girl which is unusual as it’s usually a male heroic figure, but in the 2 minute time limit we had there was no way we could have shown this difference in the time space.
It looks like a thriller film from the beginning few shots. You can tell from the screen shots above that the film is going to be quite creepy and dark. Also there is creepy non diegetic music playing over the introduction to the film and the title sequence which gives it quite an eerie feeling.
The camera is always at a high angle so it’s looking down on the kidnapper so you never see his face at the beginning which gives you a feeling of insecurity from the beginning and you can tell that he’s hiding something.

The title sequences are spread out across the beginning of the film as to build suspense, which fits in with the music too. The background is black and the writing is just plain and white  because it is represents the innocence of the young school girl who gets taken the kidnapper.
We use continuity editing in our film to keep the pace of it quite slow because it is supposed to be building suspense as it goes along.
The first representation of a typical social group is that the sociopath who kidnaps the girl is a middle aged man who acts quite suspicous from the very beginning of the film. This is typical because in films such as Taken the people who kidnap the women are always male and around middle aged and in most of films similar to ours the main villain is usually always men. Also the young girl is a stereotypical character because she is just an innocent school student who is kidnapped when she is walking home from school and it is usually young females who get kidnapped in films because they are portrayed as innocent and the easiest target. If we’d have had a larger time limit for our film, one of the characters would have broken stereotypes. The mother of the girl who is kidnapped tries to hunt down the kidnapper and in the end would have ended up saving the girl when it is usually a make hero instead. On the film so far, the mother just seems like a typical working woman with the style of her clothes (a plain dress and simple hairstyle and barely any makeup) and when she is on the phone to her daughter she acts like a typical, strict worried mum.