Evaluation - Task 2 - How does your media product represent particular groups

Our opening title sequence does not clearly represent a social group because no characters were shown, but the locations show that it is a urban and rugged area where working class people are likely to live.

Evaluation - Task 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

A conventional Thriller Opening Sequence is expected to create an element of suspense and thrill to engage the audience. It is also expected to set the tone and genre of the film by the use of titles and sound. There are 3 types of conventional opening title sequences; Discrete, Plain Background with titles and straight into the film. Most films would start with a title to show the audience what institution produced the film and they usually show the names of producers, directors, actors etc throughout the title sequence. The fonts used for the titles can help to reflect the film. For example, serif type fonts look more formal and serious compared to sans serif fonts which are more modern and plain. Film openings usually start with a very extreme shot of either a wide shot of a location or a close up of a main character to introduce the audience to where the film is set, who the characters are or both. The structure of a film can also determine how the film starts, for example; a slow seduction structured film would probably start with a slow opening sequence which introduces the story to the audience, and a quick thrill structured film would start with a very exciting and thrilling opening action shot. The title of the film usually comes in straight away at the start of the film after the institution title or at the end when all of the names of people involved have been shown.

Film - The Thing

Our Opening Sequence to 'Rejected'

Our opening sequence follows most of the conventions of a film and starts of by introducing the institution 'CANDI Studios'. The structure of our film was 'Slow Seduction' with a discrete title sequence. 'The Thing' and our title sequence both started of conventionally with a institution indent, followed by a close up with titles of peoples names throughout the title sequence. Both opening sequences are also made up of a series of shots merged together with transition effects.

Evalutaion - Task 8 - Audience Feedback and Comments

Words Montage

These are the words used to describe our thriller opening sequence by our peers

Video Response

Changes in light of feedback from roughcut

As a group we decided to make wholesale changes from our eventual rough cut. This is because we we're not happy on the direction the project was going and how it turned out. We missed out vital shots which would of taken the project to another level and we couldn't re shoot the shots needed because of continuation problems. So we decided to shoot a whole new opening. Our initial inspiration for the project was the 'Se7en' thriller opening. However we turned our attention towards 'Arlington Road' and began to take inspiration from that.

After thoroughly researching the school archive of works from previous students we realised nothing similar had been done before and our final cut project would be unique and original amongst other student's projects.

Skills Audit - Titles

Titles were added to our opening sequence using Livetype. We chose to use a bold and simple sans serif font for our titles because we wanted it to stand out from the background and to look modern. The titles were also done in white to help it contrast from the dark background and we used a couple of effects to make the titles suit the shaky handheld footage. The effects we used were transitions to fade in/out the titles and other effects which made the titles move about randomly on the screen.

Skills Audit - Title Soundtrack

The soundtrack to our title sequence was created in Soundtrack Pro. We chose not to use music for our title sequence because it wouldnt suit the way our film had been edited together, so we chose to use sound effects and long drones instead. We searched through the sound library looking for a long sound which could play through our entire title sequence, and a few shorter sounds which could be used to for the titles. The sounds we used were a long dark drone and dark hits found in the sound effects.

To get the soundtrack to play in time with our title sequence we dragged the sounds along the timeline and shortened/extended them to get them in the right places for when the titles came on.

Soundtrack composition

Skills Audit - Editing

The title sequence was edited in Final Cut Pro and we used the basic skills learnt from before to help with the editing. While editing our footage we tried out other tools and effects to try and recreate the effects used in the opening sequence of 'Arlington Road'. To cut our footage we used the blade tool and crossed the clips over the top of each other by using the transition 'Cross Dissolve'. We then adjusted the colour/brightness/contrast by using Colour Corrector, Brightness and Contrast Balance and Effects.