For my media project I decided to work in a group to produce the opening sequence of a film. For my contribution to the project I found and added the music, did some of the filming, helped make the storyboards and
made contributions to the group blog during our planning stages. We decided our genre was going to be
a gritty thriller and to create this we made our sequence very fast paced, used low key lighting and made everything quite mysterious. We also filmed most of it handheld to create the gritty, realistic feel and the music was also quite tense and sombre. To create the fast paced feeling we used a lot of tracking shots for her running and also ma
de the music have a good fast beat to it. This worked well as all the people we asked in our questionnaire thought the genre of our film was a thriller.
The main story of our film is that a girl is r
unning through the woods and at first we are unsure as to why, but there are flashbacks of her killing her boyfriend who has cheated on
her, so by the end of the sequence it is clear why she is running. We used all of the conventions of a opening sequence such as establishing equilibrium and time and place through things such as costume and lighting and having her running covered in blood, but decided to focus on creating enigmas and establishing the main protagonist. We made our sequence different by using flashbacks to give the reader an insight into what was happening. It was vital for us to do something different with our opening sequence as otherwise people would get bored with seeing the sam
e thing happening time and time again. I think this worked effectively as it creates excitement and keeps the viewer watching as they want to know what h
appens next, which is what typically happens in a thriller. They did work well as most of the people we asked in our questionnaire said they wanted to keep watching as they wanted to know what will happen to the girl.
In our opening sequence we focused on representations of men and women but instead decided to challenge the dominant stereotypes. We did this by making the girl the aggressor in the sequence instead of it typically being the man who is violent and dominant. This stereotype is similar to that of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider as she is the aggressive, dominant character. Our media language creates this representation by showing the blood on her and also showing her from a low angle when she stabs her boyfriend, as this gives her more power. We also used the typical representations of women as at the end of the sequence she huddles behind a tree and begins to cry which is the dominant stereotype of women as she seems we
ak and vulnerable. Also when the girl is running through the woods a lot of high angle shots are used so that the woods now have power
over the girl as they often symbolise no escape and are quite dominant. We used an alternative representation of women so that our film did something different and we obviously did this quite well as the people who took our questionnai
re noticed this as well.
I believe our product would be suitable for a production company like film four as they distribute a lot of gritty British films and a lot of these are also thrillers which fits with the genre of our film. Film four have distributed such films as ‘This is England’ and ‘Dead Mans Shoes’ which are in keeping with the genre of our own film and it is also a British company like our film. Film Four also distribute quite low budget films like ours so I believe the best choice of funding for our film. I believe our product is suitable for people between the ages of 15 and 30 and people who are working class as they would be able to rela
te to it more. Young people are a good audience to target as the biggest majority of cinemagoers so more people would go to see our film and it would make more money. It was also young people who filled in our questionnaire and they like our opening sequence so I believe they would also like the whole film.
We created a sense of time by having the girl running through the woods during the day to show it happened in the day time and the lighting here is quite low key due to the trees which also makes the sequence seem more like a thriller due to the lack of colour used. But the lighting is also natural which creates realism. The clothes that the girl is wearing establish that it is set in the modern day and it is clear that she has flashbacks as they are in black and white to show they happened in the past. Wh
en the girl has the flashbacks the volume of the music decreases and an eerie non-diegetic noise can be heard to build up tension when the flashbacks happen. The flashbacks are also faded in and out of very quickly to again create an eerie, strange feel. Point of view shots are used as the girl is running so that the viewer see’s things from her perspective and to involve the viewer more. We have also used a range of different shots when the girl is running to create more excitement and variety so the viewer doesn’t get bored of watching her run. The shot of the knife is also important as knifes have a lot of connotations such as violence and aggression and this is used to show the girls dysfunctional mind. By the end of this sequence such enigmas as why is the girl running and who is she stabbing are answered but there are still questions left to propel the viewer into the rest of the film and keep them interested such as will anyone find out? Or was she just being paranoid? Or is her boyfriend still alive? We created binary opposition in our sequence as the girl looks like the criminal at the beginning of the film but towards the end could also be seen as the victim.
The font we used in our opening credits has the connotations of scruffy, edgy, distorted and messy which fits in with our film as these connotations could also be used to describe the whole sequence. I have learnt a lot from this project such as how to edit a product and embed videos and create an online blog. I also learnt how to create different shots using a video camera as we used the tripod to create smooth shots and used the camera handheld to make more distorted, rough shots. From our preliminary task I have learnt how to edit a piece so that it flows more as for example in our preliminary task the door shut at different times in different shots but when we filmed our real product we filmed the sequence all at once so it didn’t jump to different parts. I have also learnt how to build up tension and how to get a better quality of sound. The programmes we used to create our coursework were iMovie and blogger.com
Overall I am pleased with the media product we created. But I would say it needs more flashbacks to help build up more tension especially at the beginning as the running tends to drag on a bit. But it is very good at building tension by creating enigmas and using fast paced editing and flashbacks. The music also fits in well and is good at building tension. The piece flows very well as the editing is very smooth and there are a wide variety of shots used so this is why I would say we did quite well.
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