Evaluation Question 1 (Dylan)

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

In the bathroom scenes we used a medium close up of our protagonist to put the focus on him shaving. Throughout the film opening we incorporated still shots and pans to establish the location and also give a sense of calm and serenity.

In order to conform to traditional film openings we created our own original production logo which is seen at the very start of our film. Like most real production logos

we chose to animate our logo by putting it behind a time lapse of stormy clouds and making it slightly translucent so that it would not appear amateur as opposed to just fading a solid white logo onto a black screen.

Our logo was inspired by an escape sign you would usually see on the top of any escape exit, the reason for choosing this was because the name of our company. The name of our production company itself was chosen as we believe the plot of most films (especially thrillers and horrors) is to get away from someone or something so it seemed to fit perfectly. The reason we chose to use clouds is because a large majority of production companies seem to use them, example of these companies include; Warner Bros, LIONSGATE, DreamWorks, and TRISTAR.

At first we decided to put the title of the film at the start of the opening but we chose to leave it until the end as it is something that most film-makers have not done. This was a risky decision but if the film was to continue you would see that our main protagonist is actually the one playing the piano which is heard throughout the opening sequence creating a smooth transition to the main film.

The colours used in the opening sequence are dark and cold which is typical of a thriller as brighter warmer colours would automatically change the film from a thriller to a more light hearted film such as a comedy.

Our film is based on a short story about a serial killer who has 100 days to live and in those 100 days plays a sick and twisted game where he plans to kill a girl each night until he dies. Our film opening sets up the plot of the story by establishing the protagonist as an ordinary man who cares about his appearance and is later revealed as a psychopath. In the opening, we chose to focus primarily on our character shaving as it is a basic task that every man is familiar and can often be associated with preparing for a special occasion i.e. meeting a girl.