0 Our product was a 2 minute opening sequence of a film.

0 I worked in a group with Tom Hayward and Qasim Iqbal.

0 We had to adhere to the codes and conventions of standard opening tile sequences.

0 We had to upload our final product onto our blog, and get feedback.

Introduction

Plot Synopsis0 The sequence is about a man who wakes up in the middle of nowhere, chained to a metal chunk in a crater.

0 He struggles to get out of the chain, and fails, even after smashing a rock against it.

0 The Protagonist gives up and slumps onto a large rock slab, and a video camera watching him zooms slowly out, before becoming static.

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and

conventions of real products?

0Our film clip was intended to be a similar genre to Saw, a psychological thriller, and so we used aspects of Saw and Hostel in the clip, as well as being influenced by The Ring.

0We also used micro elements effectively, to create verisimilitude in the sequence.

0The next few slides will give some examples of similarities in our clip and mainstream film opening sequences.

Our title.

The Ring title.

Saw 3D Establishing shots

Our Establishing Shots

Question 1 - Similarities

0 In these ways, it is comforting to know that our film sequence might also be successful if it follows certain conventions that successful films such as the Ring and Saw have used.

0However, we felt it would be good to challenge classic convention for at least one shot, as the next slide will show.

Question 1 - Difference0 This is my favourite shot in the sequence. It is an unusual shot, because the viewer is disorientated by the protagonist being

upside down.

0 This shot works well for the reason that both the viewer and the character do not know where they are.

0 I think that this shotdevelops traditional filmingtechniques, because it is anunorthodox shot.

Question 1 0 Our film is similar to other film clips of the same genre because it

starts off by creating an enigma. The viewer wonders where the setting is, it is obviously rural, and isolated. Then the pan shots begin, and there are only glimpses of our protagonist. The chained ankle, the white shirt. The viewer is confused. Then the camera suddenly changes to a medium long shot, which clearly identifies the location and the character.

0 The clip fulfils the requirements of an opening scene. In a class viewing, after the clip had finished, a student remarked “what happens next?” and this proves that our clip is successful in its aims. An opening scene also has to hook viewers in, set the tone for the film, establish the genre through all the micro elements, and entertain the viewers. In this way, I would comfortably say our film is very successful.

Question 1 - Cinematography0 The clip follows the horror/psychological thriller

genre strictly in all the micro elements, in our cinematography, we were sure to make it confusing, hooking and mysterious for our viewers. There are several shots that create enigmas, such as the opening panning shots. The viewer gets tense and uncomfortable because they are only getting a partial glimpse of the protagonist.

Protagonists’ Body

Protagonists’ Chained Ankle

Question 1 - Editing0For the editing, we attempted to create a fast paced

atmosphere. We had a lot of match on actions to make the changes of shots easy to merge together, and they work extremely well. Many typical psychological thrillers share this trait.

Just one of our match on actions

Mise En Scene

Chain

Rocks

Smart ShirtRugged Terra

in

Smart Trousers

Smart Shoes

Question 1 - Mise En Scene

0 We knew that we had to make the scene look convincing, or people would rate our clip low because of lack of effort.

0 I provided the costume, chain and isolated location for our shoot, to create verisimilitude within the story.

0 The chain we had was a flimsy

chain that continually fell off

during breaks between filming.

This is the only problem with

Mise En Scene that we had in

our film.

Question 1 - Sound

0We used copyright free sound, as a requirement, for our non diegetic soundtrack. The music can be found here:

0http://soundcloud.com/gingersdonthavesouls/sequence-music/s-SlJdG

0We felt that this music fitted the mood of the sequence perfectly.

Question 2 – How does your media product represent particular social

groups?0The main group of people

that our sequence is

portraying is victims.0A victim is helpless, weak,

and usually without any

method of escape.

Nearly all victims follow the same conventions, which consist of screaming loudly, hoping in vain that someone will save them, and displaying a physical and mental weakness, usually resulting in their deaths.

Question 2We created the image of the victim in many ways during production of our piece.

Primarily, several low angle shots of parts of the protagonist shows that someone is watching him, and immediately gives the viewer the notion that this character is going to be the victim.

Next, the character is dishevelled, clearly, his hair askew, and he is dressed in just a shirt and trousers, and this sets the tone for a typical victim.

The character begins to, as every victim does, wake up and realise where he is, and after a brief check of his bindings, begins to scream for help. The audience finds this comforting, they know that no one is going to come and help him, but they have been brought up on a diet of films where victims always shout. The shouting also brings a sense of verisimilitude to the scene.

Question 20We chose to represent the victim because it is one of

the easiest stereotypes to show. Our audiences have all correctly identified the victim as being a victim, and this is the way that we wanted them to respond.

Question 3 – What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and

why?0 I think that a co-production would sell better to foreign audiences,

because our film is a British film, so an Indiewood film would benefit us better.

0 Our British distributor would have to be a working title production, because there isn't a large independent British Film distributor.

Question 3

0 I think that Lionsgate Films would be the primary candidate for a co-distributor. They are a large American distributor, and have put good money behind other Psychological thrillers, such as the Saw Franchise, and since our film is modelled heavily on Saw, then I think that this would be a good place to start.

Question 3

0 I think that our film would have an international appeal, because it is an easy genre to watch, normal British films deal with real life situations, whereas ours is fictional, and British films like 28 Days Later have sold better than films such as Adulthood.

Question 4 – Who would be the audience for your media product?

0Our films rating is going to be a 15, although in the research and planning, we had planned it to be an 18. By changing down just one age barrier, we have widened our audience by a lot. We have aimed our product mainly at men, age 15-35, and of British nationality, because it is fundamentally a British film. Any socio-economic status would be fine, as long as the viewer had the money to go to the cinema and watch our film.

Question 4

0This is a good audience to target, and they are right for our product, because we want to make as much money as we can from it, and there are more mainstream movie viewers than niche viewers.

0We do not have a secondary audience, we feel that just one primary audience will be enough for the product to make a profit.

Question 5 – How did you attract and address your audience?

0We attracted our audience in a lot of ways when making our film.

0We had to begin by making sure that we had all the classic conventions that make viewers happy watching films.

0This includes classic narrative, chronology, and media language.

Question 50 The main disruption in our sequence is the protagonist waking up

in the middle of nowhere.The equilibrium of the movie is not yet known because this is just the opening scene.

0 We employed Binary Opposition to make our clip seem more realistic, with the victim and the kidnapper.

0 Many enigmas are in place from the first 30 seconds onwards, for example who is the victim? Why is he there? Who is watching/recording him? The audience wants to watch on past our opening scene to find out what happens to the protagonist.

0 Suspense was made by using micro elements and media language, for example the mise en scene and music, which slightly scared the viewer.

Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?0The apple macs were not something that I was fully

familiar with before the project began, and I feel that I am now comfortable with both the mac and all of its applications, such as iMovie, and safari.

0The editing software was the same as the one in high school, but I feel fully confident working on it now, and have utilised many aspects of video and audio effects to make the sequence fully effective.

0The cameras and tripod were the easiest thing we had to learn to use, they were really simple and provided us with a lot of great shots for our film.

Question 60There were, however, several limitations on our project.

There were animations that we wanted to use for our titles, and there was a fuzzy shot of me opening my eyes that we wanted to incorporate into our sequence, but with the technology we had, we created the best sequence we could have.

0Audience feedback was a lot easier to get because of the technology. We could upload the video to YouTube and then send hyperlinks to people so they could watch it, and then send them questions via email, facebook or msn, so that we could get an idea of what needed to be changed on our video.

Question 6

0The most important piece of technology in the project was our blogs. I had no idea how to use a blog before we began to use them in class, and it was really helpful to keep a backlog of all of our work, and our research and planning. It also enabled us to revisit past work and re edit it with the power of hindsight.

Question 7 - Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the

progression from it to the full project?0Our preliminary task was about 7 shots long and gave us a

rough idea of how we wanted our sequence to be. 0On filming day, we could use shots that we had used in the

prelim task, however we could evolve them and utilise them in new ways.

0As well as this, editing was a lot more successful with the actual project. We had learnt a lot from the prelim and were ready to take on more challenging things with our sequence.

0 In conclusion, the prelim helped us immensely, giving us an understanding of cameras and editing beforehand, so we could maximise our marks.

Audience Feedback

01)What Genre does the sequence belong to?02)Who was the main character?03)What details made this clear?04)What could make this clearer?05)What made you keep watching?06)Was the pace right?07)Do the images work with the music?08)Are the shots interesting?

Audience Feedback

Audience Feedback

0Each of the ten people I asked gave a similar response. The final product was something that everyone was impressed with. People did point out that the quality of camera could be better, but that would only have been possible if the cameras would have been better.

0Overall, I think that the general population would like our film, as it has not had a bad review.

Conclusion0 I think that our product works. It is believable as a

movie opening sequence, and it is because of the effort we put in that it could be successful as a film. We took the time to find good locations, mise en scene was perfect, and the editing was long and tedious, but worth it. If we had more technology and more time, we could have made a better piece, but with what we had, I am proud of our media product.