The 5th Day - codes & conventions

Codes & Conventions

My media product challenges the codes and conventions of existing media products by convening the detective as a young man. This is different from other representations of detectives as in most media products detectives are portrayed as being older, World weary men. This younger detective is based on Brad Pitts character detective Mills from the 1996 movie Se7en. By making the character, detective Grey younger but keeping to the codes and conventions by having in world weary personality it creates character depth and makes the audience want to know more about the characters life and back story. The characters history adds to the narrative of this story as it implies the characters disability, hinting towards the character suffering with PTSD. This indication adds to the characters development and makes the audience want to know more about him. The characters PTSD was shown through the use of sound clips and editing put over the filmed clips- sounds of explosions going off in the distance during his dreams, and while awake where used. PTSD can be shown in media in many different ways, for example Marty Deeks from NCSI: Los Angeles suffers with PTSD during season 5, he is shown to suffer from terrible nightmares and have vivid flashbacks. This is a more extreme representation than my characters but it shows how PTSD is shown in Media.

This shows the actors younger age challenging the traditional codes and conventions.

Another way in which my product challenges the codes and conventions of a thriller is the rural setting, in most thrillers an urban settings are used such as cities. By using a rural setting a feeling of isolation is built this makes the audience feel vulnerable. The location also creates foreboding in the audience as it conveys a sense of being lost. Its a location where everybody has been and implies that the situation could happen to anybody. This type of location is more common is horror movies such as Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was because of films like this that I decided to use a rural setting. Often these type of horror films have subgenres of survival thrillers. 

This shows the rural setting that was used for this scene, it shows the long isolated road and creates a feeling of isolation and vulnerability. 

The other way that my media product challenges the codes and conventions of a thriller is the role of the female character. Instead of being a femme fatal the female character in the beginning of the film is shown as to convey innocence and unjustified violence. After finishing this opening sequence and watching it through I decided that I would rework certain aspects, initially this was planned to just include reshooting some shots but in the end I reworked all aspects of my film, created a new storyboard and script and used different actors.