Film Opening = Evaluation Activity 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

 Millie and I decided to place our title at the end of our film opening, and this was for many reasons but one main one was because we both liked the way it brought the film to an obvious and complete end. Our film title first appears whilst there is still action continuing in the background but then fades to a black screen, pictured above, the contrast between the black and the red makes it really stand out from the background but also represents the contrast of the subject of the film opening. We used the same font in our film title as we did in the credits throughout the opening and we chose this font specifically due to the fact it slightly looks like it has been written in blood and looks slightly medieval, which relates to the imagery of candles used in the opening.

This screen grab here shows the location of where our opening was set and unlike many other film openings such as Gossip Girl, Funny Games and Skyfall which show a selection of shot to present the audience with the general area the film will be set in, our only shows this one location. However I believe this accentuates the importance of the religious aspects and recompenses the fact that that we couldn't film all the shots we wanted, such as a bird eye view of the village (general area) around the main location. Another bonus to  only having the one shot of the location is that it doesn't give away much about the rest of the film, and this was a key aspect of what I reported in my audience questionnaire.

This shot shows the costume which we dressed our characters in, there isn't many shot which fully shows the character's costume as we didn't believe this was main aspect which we wanted to focus on. However, we did use it to make another contrast between colours, in this case black and white. We also tried to chose a costume which didn't fit to female lead stereotypes, such as a fitting or revealing costume, despite the example above still keeping the . Keeping it simple encouraged our audience to focus on the more important parts of our film opening.

This screengrab here is an example of match on action, which is a camera technique we learnt about and how to use whilst filming our preliminary task. Despite this technique normally being used to help portray a conversation in a more realistic way, we have used it here to show the main character walking through the church doors. I believe this makes the audience feel more involved in the film as they can see what is happening from all angles, as if they were in the film themselves.  We also learnt other camera techniques in our preliminary task such as 180 degree rule and shot reverse shot, we would have included these if we were required to make the entire film, however with a maximum time of two minuets we wanted to focus on other shot and images.

This screengrab is taken from within the first 15 seconds of the film opening and immediately creates a feel of suspense and tension as a tracking shot reveals empty pews and then shows a character sat on the end of a row that wasn't previously there. Creating a feel of suspense, and so quickly, fulfills an aspect of thriller straight away and doing this so early in the opening allows the audience to quickly understand the genre and allows them to start anticipating what's to come. Another convention of a thriller is flashbacks, we used this in our opening to show the current girl and her old self. This almost creates a sense of confusion in the audience and puts them on edge as they are unsure of what is exactly happening. We also used over the shoulder shots to create a feel of someone being behind the main character, dark lighting, close up shots to show the expression on the characters faces and music connoting tension.

Both of these shots here include special effects, Millie and I decided to slow down both of them in order to create a sinister and ghostly feel. The shot on the left hand side is a very typical thriller shot as you cannot see the face of the character, which creates a mysterious feel and creates the image that the character may be secretive.