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

There are many conventions of a film opening, which helps the audience determine the genre of the film and who it's going to be aimed at. The conventions include; mise en scene, editing and camera shots. For a thriller film opening, the conventions used will help to build up suspense and create the tension needed. The most effective camera shots used for a thriller are close ups of props and facial expressions which we have included plenty of in our opening to distinguish the importance and significance of these items in our film.

Film openings tend to start in a typical format, here is a list of all the film conventions:

·                Introduce production company logo

·                Introduce distribution company logo

·                A title sequence of cast/crew involved in the film

·                Mood and tone is established through sound

·                Intends to draw the audience in 

·                Introduces key characters (e.g. Protagonist)

And this is the order in which a title sequence of any film (particularly thrillers) follows:

· Production Company: Logo/Indent

· Other companies involved in the film (distributors)

· Film title

· Actors/cast

· Casting

· Costume

· Music Supervisors

· Music

· Edited By

· Production Designer

· Director of Photography

· Executive Producers

· More Executive Producers

· Director (typically the directors name is at the beginning and end of the title sequence)

This is how we have followed the conventions in our thriller opening:

We have pretty much followed the typical conventions of title sequences and film openings as we have the production company first; followed by the distribution company and then we have the director’s name. We also have the name of the film at the start of our film opening; it is introduced exactly 0:57 seconds into the opening.

I have found that we followed the conventions of title sequences pretty closely in comparison with the film ‘Dead Calm’ and have not challenged the typical conventions of film openings. Both our thriller opening and Dead Calm has the title sequences over a black screen which my group found was more effective and professional looking than a stylized edit which would have being too complicated.

Also, both films have the production/distribution company first, followed by the directors name and finally the name of the film.

However, the film name in Dead Calm is introduced 0:33 seconds into the film opening; exactly 24 seconds earlier than in our film opening.