Directors commentary.

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

Question One - The conventions of an opening sequence are the titles, main character introductions, equilibrium, establishing shots, distribution and company logos, prompts and clues and the mood of the film is normally set within the first few minutes. Titles; introducing the directors, producers, cast etc., are often going in a specifically chosen way showing the importance of their roles in the film. These are important because the actors in the film will give the audience an idea as to what the sort of film it will be because the actors will often be associated with a specific genre or may relate to the director; telling us about the style of the film. For example, Johnny Depp is often cast in Tim Burton films which are very similar in the atmosphere and style they put across.



 The directors will also give us an indication of the style or mood of the film. Equilibrium is usually introduced within the first few minutes which is the normality before the problem (de-equilibrium) is introduced. This is often important because the rest of the film generally will focus on fixing the problem that arises, to get back to the equilibrium or even a better resolution.


 In opening sequences we are often introduced to the more main characters that have a significance to the rest of the film. This can be done by using quick shots of the face, giving small amounts of detail about the character. Close-ups can give us a good look at the characters, foreshadowing may also be used to create a more mysterious image. We can see these sorts of introductions in most openings; in 'Se7en', 'Psycho' and 'Silence of the Lambs', the introduction of the main character is key. In our opening, we introduced both the Equilibrium and the main characters to establish the outline of the story without going into too much detail that gives away the entire plot. Establishing shots are important to show the locations of characters, In 'The Silence Of the Lambs' the establishing shots gives us a better idea of how lonely and vulnerable the main character is by showing the audience how alone she is in the forest; how small she is in comparison to the large daunting trees, causing us to assume she is very weak. We used establishing shots in our opening to also add an atmosphere and cause our audience to feel nervous. The distribution and company logos are normally shown at the very start of the sequence. Often, these will be somewhat relevant to the type of film or the genre of the film the audience is about to watch, the logos prepare us in a way for what we are about to see. For example, 'Dreamworks' is most stereotypically used on children's films, such as 'Shark tale', 'Shrek' and 'Madagascar'. Other distribution logos include 'Paramount Pictures' who produce similar types of films such as 'The Vault,', 'Flight' and 'The Dictator', aimed at a more mature audience and 'Vertigo Films' who have been well known for british films, dealing with serious issues, such as 'The Football Factory' 'Bronson' and 'The Sweeney'. The distribution companies are both more 'grown-up' than 'Dreamworks' or 'Pixar' but they deal with very different genres of films. Additionally, there are prompts and clues in the openings, giving us small indications of what the rest of the film may be about. This is very important because the small symbols can link to parts of the rest of the film and we learn the significance of their meaning as the story unfolds. The small hints should give a small clue about the film or characters but not enough to tell the entire story because this would cause the audience to become disinterested in seeing the rest of the movie. We have use clues and prompts in our opening to give only small details away in our opening. My group decided to keep the protagonist's identity a secret so that we only give a small indication as to who our 'villain' might be. I feel that clues and prompts are very important conventions in an opening because it sets up the rest of the film. The opening of our film will also set the general mood for the story that is about to be told. From the opening we should be able to see what the mood of the film will be; horror films such as 'Insidious','Sinister' and 'The Wolf man' often set the mood in a very obvious way to involve the audience earlier on in the film, adding more of an emotional attachment to the characters as they continue watching. In our sequence, we wanted the audience to feel confused and uncertain about what they are seeing; in turn causing them to become subconsciously nervous about the events in the film.

Evaluation - Question 7

In the most recent project, there is a considerable difference in the skill used in comparison with our preliminary task showing that we have learnt alot in terms of using the cameras, editing and composition.
In our final product, we have shown more of an improvement in terms of continuity editing and timing, here we can see that our editing was very amateur and didn't look as though the transition was very smooth, in the final product we have used much more noticeable camera techniques that show we can use the cameras well and also that we had a good idea of how we wanted to piece to flow, and how we could attain this smooth transtion. i believe our camerawork has improved considerably in comparison with our older piece because the camera was more shaky in our preliminary and in the thriller opening our camerawork is smooth with skilled and smooth pan shots that look professional. We also use match on action in our thriller opening which helps to carry on the situation and gives us more of a linking plot line.


We have also improved our storyline and creative ideas, in this piece the idea was quite tacky and looked very immature, in our final piece we decided to go for a different and more serious situation that would cause more people to think about our piece rather than laugh at it, this wasn't the sort of piece we would have chosen to do earlier in the year as we immediately chose immature subject matters.


Our framing in our preliminary task wasn't abiding to the 180 degree rule and this has improved considerably in our thriller opening we have clearly used this rule throughout without breaking it. There is also a problem with editing in the preliminary as we can hear the camera clicking as it's turned on and off, this should have been edited out, we haven't made this mistake in our most recent piece because overall we have learnt to be more careful about our editing and take more time to put it together without adding in these unnecessary sounds.
I feel that i have developed my eye for these mistakes and i don't think i will make this mistake in the future.

Here we have cut out alot of the scene in terms of framing, this is a mistake that people will make when they are new to using cameras and i feel that i have stopped making this mistake with prolonged use of cameras.

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