Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

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

A convention is a reappearing way of presenting something and is usually represented through a media product which is typical to that type of product and its genre (for our product this is an action thriller film opening).

Our media product uses some forms and conventions of our chosen genre, action-thriller, such as fast-paced tension created through a dramatic soundtrack during the rendezvous of the two cars at the multi-storey car park building.

During our research, we looked at film openings that involved a rendezvous between cars at a shady setting mainly at car parks in built up areas. They all involved the hijacking from a protagonist to prevent a shady deal from going down between two antagonists. All of them were under the action thriller genre and that ended up being the genre we settled on for our film opening. However, we didn't have the time or resources to film our film opening in a built-up area in Central London. Instead, we decided to film our opening in Banbury Castle Quay car park because it was fairly local to all of us as we all live near Banbury.

For our titles and actor/director/producer etc credits, we decided to use white text and overlay the credits over the start of our film opening. The simplicity of our titles conveys that our film has a linear and simple narrative storyline that will be easy for our audience to understand and consume our film opening. Furthermore, it also conform to the conventions of our chosen genre action thriller as it is more plain and dark. This is similar to Heat because they are the same genre as our main film opening. 

Post Production: Class Feedback

Post Production: Sound

In our film opening, there is no diegetic sound of dialogue as we felt that this was the best way to build up tension, which is effective as we need to grab the audience's attention during the start of the film opening. Throughout our film opening we used non-diegetic music that climaxed towards the conclusion and build-up of the final moment of the film opening.

We searched the internet for royalty-free music to use within our narrative and make it combine as best as possible with our opening film narrative. A lot of tracks suited our genre but they didn't really suit our narrative and the speed of our film opening. We wanted a music piece that picked up speed and started quite slowly in order to build up tension within our film narrative. We chose 'Electro Zombies' as we felt that this was the best possible track to suit these specifications. Furthermore, we also wanted a track that to end the tension and fade out at the end of the film opening. The track we chose for this purpose was 'Lusus Naturae'

Post Production: Group Feedback

This a video of our selected target market watching our film opening and providing us with feedback about what they thought worked well through out our opening and possible improvements we could make in order to help us make our film opening as best as we possibly can.

Rough Cut

 

Post Production: Effects

In order to edit our film opening, we used the program Abode Premiere Pro. However, we didn't add many effects to our film because we thought it would take away from the atmosphere of our film opening. At the post production stage, the colour of our footage was quite vibrant and therefore wouldn't have suited the conventions of our genre, which is action thriller. As a result, we changed the saturation of our footage from 100 to around 70 to make the clips darker and match up together to suit the mood.

In addition, at the end of the film opening we fade out the final shot, this makes it slower and slightly more effective instead of a very sudden cut off that would kill the atmosphere of our film opening. We also felt that having no transitions would be most effective because it would allow our footage to flow together very well and not take away from our film opening.

Post Production: Titles

For the titles of our film opening we considered the font type and size to best suit the conventions of our film opening. Many of our titles were created through the use of 3D Camera Tracker when panning shots were being done. This was completed and amended further in Adobe After Effects and then converted over to Adobe Premiere Pro in order to use on our film opening. Here is an example of titles used within our film opening:

We considered many different options for our titles for our film opening, experimenting with different fonts before deciding which one best suited our film opening. Our main film cuts sharply into a climax of the music at the end of the opening to end the tension that was created during it and then title fades into the next scene for effect.

We decided on a simple font for our film opening because we felt this best represented the genre and tension in the film opening well. Therefore, with it being sharp text, it represents how the tension has a sharp climax. Furthermore, the text is very plain which correlates with the mood of our film, being dark and not very vibrant. As shown below, the title credit is slanted to represent the character walking across the path and the mood that is created as he walks across the symbol for effect. 

The titles and credits in our opening appear alongside our footage and in white text so that they stand out, however, the final title is shown by itself, as this is the most important title and will have the biggest effect to reinforce the tension created within our film opening as it appears on the climax of our sound track.