Initial Ideas

As a group we wanted to go for a theme that is original and hasn't been done before. One of the possibilities that came up from are discussions was Bollywood we believed this was a market that had a lot of room to develop in and isn't as over saturated as some other themes.  

Conventions of Bollywood

The most iconic aspects of Bollywood is the traditional music and dance. Although this is the most iconic part it's also the hardest to successfully incorporate. A lot of thrillers would use parallel sound where the non diegetic music would support the on screen so tense music would be used along with a tense moment on screen. As most Bollywood films use modern pop music this wouldn't really fit into a scene if we wanted to use parallel sound. One way around this would be to use contrapuntal sound as is used in the film "Pulp Fiction"

As seen in the clip above the music juxtaposes with whats happening on screen, this is just one way to get around the problem of music. Another way is to use more classical and traditional Indian music. Whereas the "pop" music is more upbeat with the use of high tempo drums, classical music uses more string based instruments with a slower tempo providing a much more dark tone.

When it comes to plot some of the recognised Bollywood styles include star-crossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, family ties, sacrifice, corrupt politicians, kidnappers, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences. With these being fairly common plots the feature in many styles of films not just Bollywood, it shows that the most important things to focus on is the cultural aspects. Which I believe to be music and also the props and clothing.