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

Titles + Production logo To make my opening sequence look more professional, I added a production logo, and titles. Before I edited my opening sequence, I had a look at other existing media products to see how I could incorporate their ideas into my product. After researching this, I found out how titles are effectively used within opening sequences.

Barthes Codes Within my opening sequence, I used both the hermeneutic and proairetic codes. The hermeneutic code refers to any element of the story that is not fully explained and becomes a mystery to the reader. This creates enigma and will make the audience want to continue watching. I used this code in my opening sequence as we didn’t reveal the identity of the detective for a while, this will engage the audience as they will want to watch on to find out who the detective is. The proairetic code builds up tension in the narrative, it also refers to any other action or event that suggests something else is going to happen. For example when the audience sees a gun, it will start to build up tension as they are not sure what will happen next. This code was also used in my opening sequence as we used a knife as a prop, this will build up tension and the audience will start trying to link parts of the story together.

Todorov’s Narrative Stages I feel as if my opening sequence follows Todorov's narrative stages, the opening sequence is in the recognition of disruption stage, leading up towards the attempt to repair disruption. I chose to set the opening sequence in these stages as I could do more with it, I could make it more interesting as typically, in real media products, this is where most of the action within a film is. Also, the recognition of disruption is used as a “hook”, people will remain interested as they will want to know how the characters will try to restore equilibrium.

Propp’s Theory Propp’s theory states that all films have a base 8 characters. I have incorporated this into my opening sequence by making my two main characters identical to two of the character spheres in Propp’s theory. I have presented the characters in such a way that the detective is the hero, and the other character is the helper. The detective has been shown as being the protagonist through the use of low angles and his body language/tone of his voice, I have presented him as being very dominant thus the other character is intimidated by him.

Techniques While researching other media products, I learnt that most successful films use match on action. Using this makes a fluent transition between shots. Because of this it makes everything seem more natural and realistic. It also makes the diegesis of the film more effective. We used shot reverse shots to seem as if the camera was not there, making it seem more realistic and not a pretend scenario. If we didn’t use these techniques it would reduce the overall quality of the opening sequence as it would all feel staged and the bad transitions would distract the audience from the diegesis.

180 ⁰ rule + Rule of thirds While researching we learned about the 180 degree rule, where there is an invisible line between the characters, and the camera should never cross it. We used the 180 degree rule within our opening sequence to avoid confusing the audience, to prevent this form happening, in conversations we kept the detective on the right hand side of the frame and the sidekick on the left hand side. While composing a frame, we had to consider the composition and rule of thirds, we did this as other real media products use it to up the quality of a film, so we decided to do the same. We used the rule of thirds to show the main character within a frame, for example putting things in the foreground to highlight the character.

Binary Opposites The characters in our film have opposite personalities, creating contrast and conflict. Because of this, it will keep the audience entertained and they will want to watch on. The protagonist has an aggressive personality and is very controlling, he intimidates the other character. The “sidekick” has been presented as being a coward as he is not an manly as the main character. The sidekick stutters a lot and hesitates when he answers questions.