EVALUATION Q1 - CONVENTIONS & REPRESENTATION

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

This shot where nearly half of the screen is blocked by the walls on both sides is commonly seen in typical psychological thriller films. This shot suggests the isolation of the boy which can be symbolised by the fact that he is trapped within the walls. Another convention is to represent someone who is not present within the camera to follow the conventions of the protagonist being a victim to the mind games of the antagonist. Moreover the idea of not seeing the "ghost" creates enigma to the viewers in questioning that if he exists or not or is it all in his head.

Our film opening consists of a boy who is abandoned by both parents and friends due to his mental disorder. In the social world, there are similar issues for instance, orphans, children who does not socialise allowing them to have no friends, or even kids who live in their own "imaginary" world and builds a barrier between the real world. We converged this idea of a lonely boy who created his own friend in his mind. From this shot, we can analyse that the two walls on both sides represents the barrier that is set by the boy in between the two worlds; being his own imaginary world and the real world. Adding on to this, the boy lies inside the two walls, this suggests that he is not intending to cross the "barrier" into the real world.

Many psychological thriller films usually position the youth as the protagonist being the victim of the antagonist. In other words, the antagonist often targets the child in the film as they are seen to be an easy target to manipulate (e.g. Slender man, Lights out, The boy). As researched previously in the blog, the reason for this is that children are more open minded therefore this allows them to be able to see more than normal adults do. This convention of psychological thriller films is clearly shown in our film opening as we chose to work with a young boy (Enid's brother) who is experiencing abnormal visions of his imaginary friend.

    

These close up shots of different chalk strokes in our opening follows the the conventions of thriller films. A reference for this is the film opening for "The Black Swan".

By showing close up shots increases the level of suspense within the film as well as for the audience due to the restricted scenes that are available for them to see; they cannot see the big picture. This also creates an idea of mystery which can be linked to the idea of imaginary friends.