Question 1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?

Introduction My opening title sequence imitates the thriller genre. We have tried to stick to conventional thriller theme as much as we could as we wanted to make sure that it was typical of the thriller genre. My opening title sequence complies with the character being unconventional, our protagonist becomes the antagonist, like Brad Pitt in the film ‘SE7EN’ , Brad becomes the antagonist because a series of extraordinary events happen to him; including his wife being killed. You could also say it has hints of ‘Taken’ in the film because the main character has had family members being held hostage; The same as our character , he has had his family taken and held hostage so he hunts down the man who has taken them.

Frames

Frame 1 - The Title of the film The frame of our film makes the title stand out and is a very clear to the viewer that it is the title. We chose to incorporate red to the title , to represent the blood from the gun shot. The title comes in at the end of the film ,so that it makes more of a statement and is clear that it is the title. We have made it so that the first word comes in and then the second word comes in after, this represents the antagonist character following the protagonist who has taken his family. When the title enters the screen from the right , It stops at the same time as a two gunshots go off, so that it complies with the last scene that happens in the opening title sequence. When the gunshots have been played , the two titles then go off together , representing the antagonist finding the protagonist and then following him to his house , and know knowing where he lives.

Frame 2 - Setting / Location The second frame is of our main character ‘Duke’ walking through our second location of the forest, this is a wide shot because you can see a lot of location surrounding him. This is good because its set in a forest, and forests are surrounded with negative connotations which is good as this complies well with the thriller genre. This is a typical thriller location because its in a dark , lonely, eerie forest where it seems very isolated and where no one else is. This is relatable to the thriller genre because it can scare people about forests and think ordinary location with extraordinary events. the fact that the character is looking back and around for him in this location makes the scene seem a lot more mysterious

Frame 3 – costume and props This frame is of the main characters clothing and prop, this frame is towards the end of the opening title sequence where the character is approaching the antagonists house. It shows that the character has a gun , meaning that the character is most properly about to do something illegal e.g. shoot someone. This is typical of a thriller film because it is showing violence and maybe scenes of death. We have the character with his hood up , this makes it more typical of a thriller film because putting your hood up , can hide a characters identity (maybe so no one can see them) . Also the fact that the character is wearing a parka coat could relate to his age of being in his mid 30’s.

Frame 4 – camerawork & editing We used typical thriller shots , like extreme close ups, this is two extreme close up shots put behind each other , we did this then made the opacity of one of the shots a lot lower opacity , so that you could see each of the shots through each other. This was effective because it reminds the viewer/audience why he is at that location , this was made effective by the editing and camerawork. We had extreme close up shots so that you could see what the character was typing , and so that the viewer can actually feel like they are there and experiencing it too. We thought that this sticks to the thriller genre because it gave it a poky investigation feel to the piece. The editing to do this was very interquete because you had to layer up two shots together and make sure one isn’t overpowering the other one, and so that you could see what was happening in each shot.

Frame 5 – Title font & Style The title font we used was complex , this is because it has a split down the core and has little parts missing , we used a font with a split down the core , to shows the different split to the character ‘Duke’ he had the side where he was content with what had happened and had just tried to move on , and the other side where he wants to find the person who he thinks has ‘killed’ his family. The font started of grey when it was jittering , but when it stops , the last word turns red to represent ‘Dukes’ change of mind , from being ok , to just seeing red and wanting to kill the character that ‘killed’ his family.

Frame 6 –Story & how the OTS sets it up This shot really helps set up the story line because it shows the character reflecting on the times he was with his children. This makes it more clear to the audience that it has children involved , and something has clearly happened for them, for this character to be hearing and thinking about his children. During our opening title sequence if flash’s back to the swing scenes , this is so that the audience do not forget what has happened and puts the image in to the audiences head. At the same time of this shot there is sound of children playing , this gives it more of an eerie feel to it and also helps show the audience that the character is reflecting over the loss/kidnapping of his family. This image could draw a range of audiences to go see it because it will make them feel like they want to see what has happened to this man or what has he done to deserve this, Or even to see if it was his children or family; also they might want to see what happened in order to make this character go to this location and hear flashbacks of children .

Frame 7 – Genre & how the OTS suggests it The fact that the character has a gun shows that this film will have a thriller theme to it, this could hint to the audience that there is going to be hints of violence; This makes the scene build a climax and makes it more interesting the viewer making them want to watch it more. The fact that the scene is relatively dark makes it clear to the audience that it is set at night , this is made to seem more eerie as it is set in the dark , this could relate to people having a fear of the dark, as a lot of things happen in the dark what are not seen as good. We added the sound of the character knocking on the door so that it shows this character is serious about what he is doing, and actually shows that the character is knocking with anger. The gun in this frame relates to the last title sequence, so this shot is very important because the character shoots the gun twice at the last title sequence , you hear to gun shots as the title comes in.

Frame 8 – How characters are introduced The main character is introduced right at the beginning of the opening title sequence , the characters face is not shown because the actor playing has a young face, so it wouldn’t of been realistic. The character is in a dark room on a laptop searching for something , this shows that he is intrigued in what he is doing. The table is surrounded by tobacco pouches, alcohol bottles and wrappers from food. This shows that the character does not care about himself. This is typical of the thriller genre because there is normally a character , who has lost respect for himself and his house. Shows he doesn't care about his life and may not know what he is going to end up doing.

Frame 9 – Special effects Because our film was a low budget, we couldn’t use a lot of very good high definition special effects this is because they usually cost a lot. But we tried our best to make it as good as we could , we did this in this scene by making it look like the characters movement had a trail. This is one of the most technical things that me and Laura did , it included a lot of patience. It looked like it was loosing signal so we added a signal sound which made it look a lot more effective and really brought this shot together. We did this by layering a couple of shots up, and then delaying them by seconds on each shot. We used the same shot and just used different sections , so that it had a constant flow and did skip to different parts of the shot.