Finished introduction

Question 2

Question 1

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

For our coursework task we had to create a two minute opening sequence for our new film, however before doing this we had to research and look into the typical conventions of an opening sequence. An opening sequence gives people an insight into what the film will later be about. There are many different conventions that an opening sequence follows, for example it'll need to have; titles; it needs to set the mood for the audience; needs to have the soundtrack overlaying; display the distribution and production companies; have an equilibrium; get the viewer asking questions and to have an establishing shot to set the scene. Conventions are used to help set the scene and give the viewer an understanding of what will be happening later in the film. The conventions set out guidelines of how to display and start the film. The most important convention that an opening sequence will have to follow is to introduce characters. The characters will allow a set up for the equilibrium where you see their lives before a certain event happens later in the movie changing who they are.

Titles from my opening sequence

After considering all the conventions of an opening sequence we needed to decide what was best for our genre of thriller. Our film will need to have low key lighting and needs to set a dark and spooky mood during the start, this will need to carry on throughout the entire film. We would need place sound effects such as a kick drums to build up tension for the audience. A variety of shot types were important to us when filming our opening sequence, our starting shots let the audience know where they are and what's happening, it will also introduce them too our main character.

My Opening shots 

In our film we have used nearly all the conventions so the audience will feel more engaged when watching our opening sequence. However I feel as though our film lacks the use of an equilibrium as only one character is introduced and it's after the event rather than before.

Directors Commentry

Question 7

Looking back on your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I filmed the preliminary task at the start of the year and have since learnt lots of new skills that have aided me in developing and improving my finished opening sequence. When looking back at my preliminary task I can see that I used very basic shots, with very little knowledge on media rules such as the rule of thirds, but after looking back over my opening sequence I can tell that I've used them correctly. However all the mistakes and corrections I've made whilst making my preliminary, I've been able to fix and improve upon whilst filming and editing my opening sequence.

 

Above is an extract from my preliminary task. Whilst filming we decided to film the opening of a door. We filmed both sides of the door and edited it so that as Joe passed through the door it would flow through. However whilst filming Joe opened the door to fast and we didn't notice until we went to edit. What we had to do was speed up the clip so it looked as though the doors are opening at the same speed. This is very obvious in the clip, but we haven't got any flaws like this in our opening sequence.

 

The clip above is the very first piece of camerawork in our opening sequence. This is already a massive difference from our preliminary, using the use of non-diagetic and long shots which was used little in my preliminary task. This shows how much I have learnt through editing as well as filming.

FOCUS GROUP

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