In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?
Our final product of an opening to a thriller film conformed to the conventions and forms or real media products in many ways, this 9 frame title sequence of our media product gives a brief idea of what my group and I cooperated into the opening in order for it to conform to the conventions of a real life media product, examples of this are our production and distribution companies 'Breeze-block Productions' and 'Clockwork Distributors'.
Production Logos:
My group and I created the production and distribution company logos presented on the right-hand side. Before we went onto creating them we were obliged to research other company names and logos, on the left-hand side you can see examples of real media products
What we noticed about how production companies are cooperated in real media products is that they are animated, like for example Dream Works. After attempting to create something similar, we decided that our production company will not involve any movement as it does with Dream Works whereby there is a close up to the character on the moon, instead we used the sound effect of a typewriter in the background to create a sort of mysterious beginning, this way the audience will be intrigued to know what this sound is and why can they hear it.
However a common trend which we noticed was that the name of the company usually matches the image it presents, for example Universal uses the universe, therefore we decided to create the 'Clockwork Distributors' using the image of a clock to conform to a real product. I thought this was a very realistic logo for a distribution company, as well as this the sound effect of the typewriter, which to some viewers could be interpreted as the sound of a clock ticking or an old camera filming, which also creates a mysterious atmosphere.
Title:
Our title 'DiSoRiEnTaTiOn' was decided as a group also to highlight the idea that our protagonist is confused, she is completely unaware of the antagonists presence in her house. She becomes frightened when she knows that somebody is in the house. The use of mixture of smaller and larger letters just adds to the feeling of being disorientated and confused as the protagonist is, this is to immerse the audience into our opening so that they understand how the protagonist must be feeling, as the characters are also young, our targeted audience which is the younger demographic will find it easier to relate to the film.
Our title of the film as well as the entire idea of the opening to the thriller has come from sections of the film 'Sinister' (2012).
Our title of the film comes at the beginning as my group and I decided to prevent it from looking like a trailer. I thought it was really effective in the way that the writing fades onto the screen in Sinister and we recreated this in our own opening as it, in our opinions, was a very successful way to begin a thriller. In terms of atmosphere, to the audience this title would in fact look very sinister, the actual name and the way it has been written on top of the clip in the background also adds to this sinister atmosphere which I thought was very effective. Our title came before any of the directors or the crew were credited so that the audience would instantly be aware of the name and they perhaps make assumptions of what our film could be about.
The Antagonist:
With the antagonist on the left-hand side, we decided to keep the characters face covered, like the antagonist of the 1979 film 'Stalker' (Tarkovsky). As a group we decided that it would be most effective if the antagonist face was covered as the audience would be more eager to find out who this person is and why they are in somebodies house, however, we decided to use a female character as opposed to a male character which would stereotypically be used in thrillers similar to our own like for example 'Stalker'. Personally I thought that this would make the opening a lot more interesting as it would open a door to interpretation of the opening by the audience. This would lead to questions such as "why is this girl in another girls house?" or "why is she raiding through her drawers?". The antagonist is also dressed in all black, we noticed that in the film Stalker the antagonist in the picture on the right-hand side is also covered by shadow using lighting, we interpreted this by using costume. Overall this was effective as it made the character more mysterious, although the character may not look dangerous, it raises the questions of "why are they present in this house?".
You can clearly see that both actors are playing the role of young females, so perhaps the audience would be thinking about what happened between the two in the past to make the antagonist act in the way that she did.
Constant shots of the antagonist from behind and the effect of the hand-help camera makes the audience feel as though this is from their point of view and they are present at the scene, the fact that they are unaware of the appearance of the character they become more immersed in the opening.
The rest of the shots of the antagonist also follow this trend of it being a point of view shot of the audience member, this keeps the mysterious atmosphere, in which the pace increases as the antagonist trashes the room looking for items as the protagonist is getting closer to her home.
The Protagonist:
The protagonist is mainly only seen walking home or performing ordinary actions such as looking through the mail. The characters entire body is visible, her clothes are very bright and she looks very casual. This is the complete opposite to the antagonist who is dressed in all black and therefore this creates the contrast between the two locations: the protagonists house and the road on which she is walking home.
The contrast between the two scenes builds a faster pace as there a jump-cuts between both scenes, this in my opinion keeps the audience interested to find out what's going on. As the protagonist gets closer and closer to the house, the tension really begins to build and the pace increases which can really immerse the audience into our opening. The protagonist and the antagonist are the only two characters to be introduced in our opening in which their names appear within the credits of the opening. The actors names appear after the directors during the scenes which they are seen in so that the audience is aware of who is who. The font which the credits and the title are presented in is the same throughout, we used this as it was the most similar to the film Sinister. This type of font is effective because it makes it clear to the audience what genre this film will be, the way that the credits fade onto the screen is very eerie too which helpful in terms of creating an atmosphere.
Camera-work:
In the shot where the protagonist is reaching her house, we also interpreted the idea from the film Sinister, at this point the pace is very quick as the protagonist is almost in the house and the antagonist knows that she does not have much time to be in the house, hence the reason her movement is very rapid and violent.
The point of view shot from the protagonist again can immerse the audience into the opening as they are metaphorically reaching the house with the protagonist however they are aware that the antagonist is in there and therefore the audience will be eager to know what will happen once the protagonist reaches the house.
Sound:
The idea of the use of the sound effect of a typewriter was also used from Sinister, this sound of a typewriter can be interpreted as film tape, which is how my group and I imagined it. This is an example of one of the non-diegetic sounds which we decided to use in our opening, this is sound which only the audience can hear. Another example of non-diegetic sound which we decided to use begins playing as the title fades onto the screen, this created a lot of tension as soon as the opening began. The music used was produced by a woman playing on a water-phone, this instrument is used in the background of a lot of horror and thrillers.
We also have many diegetic sounds within our opening which are sounds that both the characters in the opening and the audience can hear. These are sounds such as the wind blowing or the birds chirping. These sounds can make the audience feel as though they are a part of the opening, therefore making it a lot more realistic to the viewer.
I feel that our biggest problem in terms of the production process was the brightness outside, however through the continuous use of final cut pro I was able to learn how to edit the clip to reduce the brightness of the video so that the quality came out better.
