Q1)  In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?

The opening sequence that we made follows many of the forms and conventions set by the real movies that are out there. There are many factors we needed to consider when making the opening sequence like the form of the opening and the Mise en Scene, which are elements like the lighting and setting.  As our opening sequence is a thriller, we decided to give clues right from the start we did this as an opening sequence needs to hook the viewer from the very first moment. We did this as it follows the codes and conventions of thriller genre movies, and we wanted the media product to develop and challenge the codes and conventions just like real media products. The lighting is important in a thriller as it help sets the scene and adds to the tension, our opening sequence had dim lights to make the room seem more mysterious, thrillers follow this convention to get more affect in the setting for example ‘Kill Bill Vol.1’. ‘Kill Bill Vol.1’ during the fighting scene in the oriental garden had a great mysterious element about it as the only lights that were in the garden did not add a lot light to the garden and it makes everything dim.

Our opening sequence challenged this convention by making it not only just a thriller but also an action, which it relates to the kidnapping element, and romantic, which happens to end wrong, opening as well so we used a hint of red in the lighting to make the colour associated with love , death, action and also anger most thrillers and psychological .We choose the death theme from ‘Memento’ , the psychological thriller and love theme from the move ‘Step Father’   .They have to make the viewer think and concentrate to keep them wondering what is going to happen next, this is why we created the opening sequence to  make the viewer to piece things together. The setting is really important to a thriller so made are setting seem mysterious but remembering to always to give clues. We gained research about conventions on thrillers by watching opening sequences like ‘Kill Bill Vol.2’ and ‘Memento’.

 

 

We used one character in our opening sequence but we came up with interesting ways to establish the other characters in the movie, real thriller media products do this as it add suspense as you want to know who the character is for example in our opening sequence you want to know who is tied up and why. And it also gives clues to what the story is about for example the movie ‘Memento’. However a lot of thriller movies show more than one character in a opening sequences so we decided to challenge that an example of this is in ‘Shutter Island ‘in this movie to characters are shown in the opening sequence.  We used both diegetic  and non- diegetic sounds to let the audience to piece together the opening seunce. We made the soundtrack parallel to visuals these conventions are important to a thriller opening as it adds the tension just like in the movie ‘Memento’ where the sounds are diegetic and non- diegetic. We decided not to challenge this convention as we thought it would help make our opening sequence seem more mysterious.

 The opening sequence is a montage sequence/non liner sequence this is when the narrative is not in chronological order, the majority of real thriller media products do this as it is unpredictable and to keep the viewer interested. Movies that follow this convention are ‘Shutter Island’, ‘Inception’ and ‘I Robot’, these three movies all start the end of the movie then they cut back to the start.