Evaluation Part 1

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

For our film, The Forgotten Truth, we chose the genre of psychological thriller which takes elements from Thriller films and adds Psychological elements to them, in our films case it touches on mental illness.  A common convention of this genre which is reflected in our film is non-linear plots, an example of this would be The Sixth Sense, with the audience finding out at the end of the film that Dr. Crowe has been dead all along. We implemented this narrative in our film with the audience seeing flashbacks of Damian and Lily's past relationship, but as the film goes on it is revealed that Damian killed his wife and is seeing mere visions of her, so in terms of continuity our film could be seen as conventional within its genre. In terms of technical continuity, another convention within the Thriller genre is fast paced, action scenes, and again, our film includes jump cuts short shot lengths in certain scenes, we used this editing technique in order to reflect Damian's desperation and anger. We also stuck to the conventional 180 degree rule in our shots in order to avoid confusing our audience, and adhered to the 30 degree rule. We made sure to include a track in zoom out shot of Damian just before the flashback scenes in order to keep good continuity, we may have confused our audience with a sudden transition from the present to the past without this 'transition' shot. Our match on action shots were also filmed correctly to ensure good continuity. 


In terms of content our film is very reflective of it's genre. Our film contains a strong male lead character and a subservient female character. However, in most conventional thrillers the lead male characters are the protagonist whereas in our film Damian has a sort of anti-hero role and then as the film reaches its end you realise that he was in fact the antagonist of the story, which is a move away from the conventional thriller narrative of the male hero. We did however include a female doctor which subverts the traditional view of male doctors and female nurses. The plot line is also reflective of the genre with it being non-linear, examples of similar films to ours which implement no-linear plot lines are The Sixth Sense and Shutter Island.

Our film contains a pastiche to American History X, with the flashbacks being in unsaturated black and white to represent past memories. We used this technique first and foremost to differentiate the past and present, however, we thought this would be a good way to express Damian's disconnection with his past and present the images in a hazy, illusory way. We also used a voiceover which is a pastiche to Fight Club. This film also contains psychological elements, so we took this idea and used it to help bring Damian to life and tell his story from his point of view, before the actual events that took place in our film were revealed.

 The main audience pleasure that our film provides is emotional pleasure from seeing the relationship between Damian and Lily go from seemingly loving to abusive and eventually Damian killing Lily. We wanted this to come across as heart wrenching and really tap into the audience's emotions, and I think we achieved this, with reference to Richard Dyer's theory of entertainment stating that 'intensity' being vital for audience satisfaction, I believe our film achieved great emotional intensity. I believe our film relates to two more elements of this theory, community and transparency. We achieved a sense of community by having Damian and Lily being in a romantic relationship. In terms of transparency the audience are kept in the dark slightly about Damian's intentions but as the film goes on the audience do encounter a high level of transparency as Damian is revealed to have been certified insane.
We took influences from several films during the making of The Forgotten Truth. Fight Club provided inspiration for the voice over, American History X for the flash backs and Shutter Island for the nonlinear storyline, despite this our film does manage to stay original and true to its genre.