Our film would come under a hybrid of the genres drama and psychological thriller. The use of this hybrid can be seen most obviously in the narrative of the film. Our narrative shows drama conventions through the direction in which the first half of the film progresses – concentrating on the emotions of our main character, Ashley. It then twists towards that of a psychological thriller there after (as it shows Ashley becoming more and more paranoid and obsessed with his ex-girlfriend, until he finally snaps and plans his murder-suicide towards the end of the film).
Our film therefore challenges the conventions of both genres simply by using narrative conventions of both, creating juxtaposing feelings for the audience. The fact that the film starts out as a drama means that the audience does begin to understand and feel sympathy for our main character as a protagonist, yet any views they have of him to begin with then conflict with the views they would have of him as the more villainous, antagonist aspect of his character is revealed as the film turns into the psychological thriller.
Our main themes of loss, isolation, rejection, paranoia and revenge also follow conventions, as they would typically be the same things that would motivate the character’s psychological breakdown in our film and in others that inspired us. For example, rejection, paranoia and revenge are all main themes in Obsessed which was one of the films we took inspiration from when first developing the idea for our story, in the way that the obsessed character starts out the film as quite normal, yet as a result of the rejection their behaviours become stranger and eventually very sinister as the film processes.However, we challenged these same themes in the way that we portrayed them in comparison to other films of the genre. For example, rather than have Ashley appear as someone quite creepy with stalker-like tendencies (as convention would dictate), we instead had him seem like a typical heartbroken teenage boy for the majority of the film, but then suddenly switch towards the end. We feel that by breaking the conventions of the themes in this way, we are able to shock the audience all the more with the twist at the end.
Genre conventions can also be seen in our mise en scene. For example, in our character’s facial expression and body language, which are both quite reserved and generally gives the impression to those around him that he’d prefer to keep himself to himself. As many main characters in psychodynamic thrillers/dramas are classically introverts, we thought this could be a good way to introduce the audience to the idea of this from the very beginning of the opening.
However we did challenge the conventions in mise en scene. For example, to match our character, the hair make-up, setting and costume had to be age-appropriate rather than that of a more typical psychological thriller/ drama. So he wore school uniform in the school and casual clothes (tracksuit bottoms and a top) at home, with no make-up and spiky gelled hair (as would be typical of a boy his age).
We do follow conventions in our choice of main character. As is typical of a drama/psychological thriller, our main character is a male who is isolated, heartbroken, and vengeful and has been rejected in some way or another - similar to the main character of Fatal Attraction. However, we challenge character conventions in the way that Ashley is of school age (rarely seen in psychological thrillers), which just makes it even more shocking to the audience when his mental state begins to diminish and he becomes more and more dangerous throughout the film.
We followed genre conventions in terms of sound in the way that we kept dialogue to a minimum, following the typical technique used in both drama and psychological thriller films, whereby the lack of dialogue is used to both build tension as well as make the audience ask questions, because they have to rely more on the action rather than the words. We were originally inspired to do this by the psychological thriller American Psycho, whereby the opening simply shows the main character’s daily routine with no dialogue or any other characters making the audience believe he is like any other normal person, which just makes it all the more surprising when the extent of his psychological issues become more apparent (much like our own opening). Also the song we used is quite sombre, yet still quite tense, catering to both film genres. We challenged these conventions with the genre of the song itself, as we chose one that had a heavy, dubstep-influenced base rather than one that that would have been more conventional. We did this because it reflected the typical music that someone Ashley’s age (which would also be around the age of our target audience) would listen to. Actually, because of this our soundtrack is quite similar to that of Kidulthood, in the way that the music is age appropriate (for a similar target audience) yet is still able to build tension, even though it is a different film genre to that of our film.
