1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Indent: We used the Universal Studios indent to make our film appear more realistic and to make it clear and keep it basic. Universal Studios is also a well known company for funding and distributing films.

Titles: Our title is very similar to the film title from ‘Mirage’. Both titles have a black background and white writing. The black background makes the writing stand out more and the font is kept basic. Both films are thrillers and the basic font and black background are characteristics of that genre. In other words the main title is what draws the audiences eyes which usually happens in a thriller when a character is about to die, they become the main focus at that particular moment in time.

Location: Our location was set in a classroom from our college. The location was not well established in the opening scene but this was because we wanted to keep the location a mystery. The Lady, our character thought she was in an unknown place and she was lost so by us not giving the location away it meant that the audience could experience what the lady is going through and how she would be feeling.

Costume: Our costume is similar to a character from the film ‘The Ring’. Both characters stare down and hide their face which give them that mysterious look. From the top half of both characters they are wearing a white lose top/dress. Both characters have dark black hair which helped give us the thriller genre look within the character.

Lighting: On all of our shots shown there has been a lot of lighting to represent the character as being friendly. This is why many medium shots and close-ups were used as it made us feel closer to the character. In thriller films as shown in the print screens above there is also a lot of lighting and many close-ups. The difference between both shots is in the shot on the left
we are at a slight tilt/high angle but distant which makes the audience feel like they are in power when they aren't. In our shot shown above on the right we were not aiming for that therefore many close ups and a lot of lighting was used. This meant that the audience would not feel distant or afraid of the lady.

Props: In our film the main prop we used was a modern hourglass hence our film title 'Hourglass'. We had other props such as a pen which was also a main prop. The hourglass was used for its purpose, timing. The pen was more of an importance in the opening sequence because it was used for the lady to write on the wall of the image in her head.