Evaluation Question 1: How Does Your Film Use, Develop And Challenge The Codes And Conventions Of Similar Media Products?

Our film is a psychological thriller genre and it crime. involves a slight bit of crime. This is because the main character in our film (the mother) has become obsessed due to the loss of her child to cot death, leading her to kidnap a child where the crime genre comes into the film as she is arrested by the police officer in the end. The main themes we have used in our film are death and a storyline that makes the audience really think. In our opening sequence we developed and challenged the codes and conventions of other thrillers, as well as using them. This is because certain scenes such as the threading the needle, walking to the house and feeding the baby are normal things but the way we did it made it seem like it is something out of the norm.

We challenged the codes and conventions of a thriller in the first shot as it is just of a regular house you see in the street, which makes it seem like it is a normal movie as it is just a regular house, so it seems like a normal thing, this is similar to the opening of American Psycho as in the opening of that movie he is carrying out a day to day routine where he wakes up, so it seems normal, just like the first shot does in our opening sequence.

Our second shot however, follows the codes and conventions, as it is the mother rocking, which shows us that she is crazy and in psychological thrillers, there are a lot of crazy people, this is similar to a lot of thrillers as they often have the use of a rocking chair, for example in the Conjuring, but we just had our actress rocking on the floor, showing how unstable she is.

The third and fourth shot were decided by our audience as our most creepy shots, which as a group we developed the codes and conventions of a psychological thriller as dummy's and children's toys are for use of children but we had an adult doing these childish things which creeped out our audience, thus developing the codes and conventions.

The fifth shot of feeding the "baby" is challenging the codes and conventions as a mother feeding a baby is normal, but however a mother feeding a teddy bear is not. So the use of the teddy bear makes it appear completely out the norm. This is a little shocking to the audience as it is not something they would expect to see.

In our sixth shot we were following the codes and conventions is where the first piece of dialogue is used saying "Goochy Goochy Goo" which is really creepy and our audience said was very creepy as she is looking in a mirror saying it to herself, which is a phrase you would say to a baby, making her seem really weird and disturbed which is following the codes and conventions.

In the seventh shot of the mother threading the needle, which makes the audience question what the motives of the mothers are, what she is out to do using that sharp object, though threading a needle is a normal harmless thing, due to the way our actress is doing it by staring deep into the needle it makes it seem like its possibly an evil thing and makes you wonder what she is going to do with a sharp object which is developing the codes and conventions.

In the last two shots, eight and nine, the mother’s strange behaviour reaches its climax with the mother screaming down the camera. The happy jumping on the sofa and skipping contrasts with the angry scream at the end, shocking the audience. This follows the codes and conventions as the tension builds up.