Opening Sequence Evaluation

OPENING SEQUENCE EVALUATION
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our thriller product incorporates generic conventions in relation to the professional thriller movies for example Inception. In our production we have clearly challenged and conformed to the psychological thriller genre. To exemplify one of our main conventions is that the protagonist endures a series of psychological and emotional distress rather than physical harm. This is seen whilst the main character under goes confusion and shock as she is not able to understand and is captivated in the antagonists games. This complements our sub-genre and indicates that our production is a psychological thriller. Soundtracks are an significant element of a thriller genre as they contribute to the overall tone and mood of the narrative. Black Swan was an inspirtational opening sequence to our initial soundtrack as it incorprated dramatic sound effects creating emphasis upon emotion and the captivation of the protagonist. Similarly we used dramatic and high picthed sounds to complete this sense of darkness and struggle to relate to our original choice of genre. The effective camera techniques used in Shutter Island encorouged our variation of shots. Close ups were used in bringing attention to our antagonists sinister appearance similar to how Shutter island incorprates close ups to reveal the identity of its antagonists. We were able to create a sense of ambiguity as what appeared on screen was not apparent to the other characters but only the protagonist. From research we were able to gather ideas and characteristics from other professional films influencing our narrative. For example the main character in Woman In Black suffers from hallucinations as he sees a spirit of a woman who is successful in distorting his life. Similarly, in our sequence the main character suffers from hallucinations as only she can see the antagonist. The reporter has fallen prey to its predator once she enters the psychiatric unit in a bid to re-open a closed and restricted file. The mind game that is played here is that the protagonist meets a demon soul who realistically does not exist in the eyes of the other characters. This concept builds enigma as the audience are certainly not aware of the on goings, this is an effective technique incorporated in many thriller conventions as it lures the audience in, attracting their attention and making them eager to find out the truth at the end.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?Within the first few minutes of our sequence there are 4 characters that are introduced all of different racial backgrounds. This appeals to different social groups as it isn’t based on one ethnicity. The main character is of an Asian background, and is around 17-20 years of age, our antagonist is around 27-30 years of age this expands the age range and allows a variety of age ranges to watch our sequence but it appeals more to 16+ whom are our target audience. The female protagonist is dressed smartly and is well presented showing she is from a middle class background whereas our antagonist has rough hair, bad skin and is roughly dressed, but as she was a metal patient we can not stereotype her to a certain class but she has the stereotypical traits of a mental patient. Our characters fit well within the stereotypical traits of their representation. This fits in well with our target audience as from our primary research and character profile we created the character that attracts our target audience the most. In most thriller films, the dominant character tends to be male, so we decided to make the dominant characters in our opening sequence all females to stop any stereotypes linked to thriller films. When we did our questionnaire asking what the audience preferred in a psychological thriller film a lot of the females said they are bored of always seeing a male represented as the dominant character and the female represented as the passive character, so we thought we would take what they said into consideration and make the dominant characters in our opening sequence females.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?Our media product is a typical psychological based thriller which is similar to some products within the same sub-genre. For example, Shutter Island directed by Martin Scorsese or Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky. Our film could be produced by popular Hollywood studios such as Paramount Pictures or Fox Searchlight Pictures because they produce films like ours. Our film would be available at cinemas first and then available on platforms such as iTunes for Apple products and Play Store for Android products which would make it easily available to a wide range of individuals and finally TV. As a group, we recognised the fact that most people have iPads or Android products where they would rather watch movies on anywhere and at anytime of the day. We felt it would be a great idea to release the film on these platforms first before releasing it on TV and DVD. We would not be producing any form of merchandise because we do not think it would be necessary and appealing to our target audience. We asked a couple of people who said they enjoyed our media opening sequence and they said there would be no point making any form of merchandise because personally they won’t buy them as they have passed the age where merchandise is found attractive. So, we therefore decided to listen to our target audience in order to save money by reducing costs and avoiding a dicey situation.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Through extensive research (primary and secondary), we came to a conclusion that the best possible target audience that our film appeals to would included both males and females aged 16 to 45. The reason for this is that this target audience are specified as imaginative, creative and desire an experience of thrill. We got our results from the questionnaires we gave out, findings from the internet, creation of a pie chart and lastly a simple drawing done in accordance to the idea of how the audience would like the appearance of the main character. From the questionnaires we gave out, we discovered a lot about our target audience and what they liked. They stated that they preferred the psychological thriller sub-genre. Like the film Shutter Island, our main character is mentally disabled but is the antagonist and it also appeals to the exact age group. We realised that the people who would enjoy our film would mostly be students and middle aged adults. Most of them have similar hobbies and interests and this made us come to a conclusion that if we released our film in the cinema, they would view it there.

5) How do you attract/address your audience?
Nowadays, we always hear people complaining about how there are never any good films out so we asked random people what they preferred through questionnaires and surveys, so that we could be able to make something that they would like and would enjoy watching. We also wanted to make our film multicultural to prevent individuals judging us for not including people from different cultural backgrounds. We began to attract our target audience from the moment Nina Ward (the main character) was introduced to the audience in her room. We found out that our target audience believed women are always portrayed as passive in most thriller movies, so we took this into consideration by making our main character female and by giving her a complicated role as seen in the opening sequence. Although she is in a mental institution, she’s the antagonist as the audience see towards the end when she confuses the reporter who decides to pay her a visit.

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
We have gained so many skilled from the process of constructing the product. We used a variety of technologies to create our final product. For example, we learnt how to use the video camera we were given, by playing around with the different buttons to see what the camera was capable of doing. We learnt how to focus, zoom and blur. We all had a go at using the camera from the preliminary task to the final production. We also used a program called Final Cut Express to edit our video footage. This was a bit challenging at first because it was new to us and there were so many icons available, but we were giving a set of instructions by our teacher which helped us to familiarize ourselves with the program. When creating the soundtrack for our animatic, we had to use Garageband. It was an exciting experience and also a very useful application because we were able to play around with the various sounds available on it to create our soundtrack. After uploading our footage and editing, we realized that our initial soundtrack did not match the edited video, so we decided to adjust it by taking bits out and adding new sounds to go with specific scenes in our opening sequence. We also used QuickTime to transfer the moving image for our production logo to Final Cut Express which was quite challenging until a member of our group was able to do it.

7) Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Since the creation of our preliminary task, we learnt a great deal of skills not only about filming and editing but also how to work as a team and also how to conduct different forms of research. The preliminary task was incredibly helpful when it came to producing our final opening sequence. We learnt how to use the camera and tripod efficiently, for example, during the preliminary task; we learnt how to handle the camera and how to record and rewind video footage's without connecting it to the computer. We also learnt how to attach and detach the camera from the tripod safely. We found the use of the two equipments easy which made the filming of our actual opening sequence straightforward and well-organised. The preliminary task also gave us ideas of what setbacks with might encounter and how we would have to deal with the problems. For example, we realised we might have problems with lighting due to the time of the day our filming would take place, also camera angles and not bridging the 180◦ rule. We realised that we broke the 180◦ rule in our preliminary task, so we tried our best to avoid that occurring during the actual filming process.
When it came to editing the preliminary task, we were exposed to a lot of effects and sounds that we liked and we thought we would most likely use in our final opening sequence. We also decided to get images that looked like what we were trying to portray in our final opening sequence storyboard compared to our preliminary task storyboard where we had bad drawings of what we were going to do. Overall, by accomplishing our preliminary task, as a group we feel it had a huge impact on how our actual opening sequence came out. The fact that we were exposed to the equipment and software early by practising with the preliminary task made our opening sequence a great success.