OPENING SEQUENCE EVALUATION

In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms of real media

conventions?

Traditional opening sequence conventions

To recreate a typical/traditional thriller you must make sure you include and re-invent some key aspects to your thriller openingThese aspects are: Camerawork Music/sound Themes Settings Characters

CameraworkAs the cameraman, it was key that I used inspiration from other thrillers to recreate that traditional thriller.One thriller that inspired me when filming our antagonist’s phone conversation is the thriller “When a stranger calls” because I enjoyed the mystery and enigma of the character and the angled camera shots which make it difficult to identify the character.

Camerawork

I believe our camerawork was quite similar to a traditional and typical thriller as the shots (especially extreme close ups) were used to provoke an enigma or fear when needed ,similar to how a typical thriller would use them.These three images were the most effective extreme close ups from our opening.

Music/SoundMusic can be vital to a thriller as it can create tension to a scene or add shock to a jump scare although some Japanese films don’t use a sound track to add a sense of realism to the film. An example of a film without a sound track is “the Blair Witch Project”.

One of the most famous sound tracks to be used in a thriller scene is the shower scene from Hitchcock’s famous thriller “Psycho”.Here is a YouTube clip of that scene with and without music and see what a difference it makes.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81

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Our Sound TrackMe and Felix decided to make our own sound track and created it using a music software program called Logic Pro 9. As we are AS level music technology students, we already knew how to use the software program.We were inspired by dark sound tracks heard in other thriller movies. I was inspired by a thriller sound track “Secret Window” with its use of a drone sound, as well as echoic, cave-like sounds of water and stones.We didn’t want our sound track to have melody of any sort and just wanted to have a deep, dark undertone to encode fear and increase suspense.

Themes/Plot

With our thriller opening, we didn’t want it to be the typical, average plot/theme about someone being murdered or kidnapped. We discussed as a group and decided we would create a political thriller. This was a good subgenre to choose as these aren’t made as often and can have a strong starting point to your film as most political thrillers are set in the past. A couple good political thrillers are “Enemy of the State”, The China Syndrome and JFK.Our inspiration for making a political thriller came from the news, which are how most political thrillers come to surface. A fairly recent news story is the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, which gave us the incentive on the idea of terrorism.

Themes/PlotThe Idea for the school theme came from inspiration as well. We wanted to challenge the idea that schools are supposed to be a safe place and that teachers are supposed to be trusting and our inspiration for that came from a movie called “Arlington Road” and the successful television show “Breaking Bad” which the poster below gave our idea for the title for the movie.

SettingsAs our plot is based in a school, one of the settings was already given to us. We decided that the setting for the antagonist should provoke an enigma to match the idea of mystery to the character. We decided a dark, cramp basement would be our best bet. We wanted to really provoke fear when introducing the antagonist so I came up with the idea of covering the light with a red filter. I believe this helped encode fear by adding something simple with a great outcome to the surroundings. Here are some pictures of when we filmed that scene:

Settings and Iconography

One thing we should have done in our opening sequence was filming some establishing shots of London’s famous attractions such as the London Eye, Buckingham Palace etc. This would have helped in defining the country it is set and would have added some iconography. Iconography is used greatly in any genre of film because if people know the area it is set in it is more likely they are going to see it and especially if they live in the area as they will know the distinguishing sights and landscape.

CharactersCharacters are one of the most key element to any film. They can give strong emotions and opinions to and for any certain group or individual in society. Filmmakers can decide between two things with what to do with these social groups. They can either follow the typical conventions of the groups or challenge them. This can be a way of getting an opinion across about the group using the media of film. What some thriller genres tend to do is challenge the conventions of certain people especially when politics or any conversational topic come into play (which is why the news is important to filmmakers). This is why we decided to create a political film, so we could challenge the conventions of people we trust.

CharactersI believe that the strongest character in a thriller movie will always be the antagonist. The antagonist will always be shown in a negative way whether its because of the way they look or act or both. This is why I really wanted to make the antagonist empowering and aggressively take control of the situation (in this case the phone call). Most thriller antagonists have a feature about them which make them noticeable. We decided a ring would be a small, distinct way of showing that which people would remember.