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

The title of the film: We put the title at the end of the opening sequence to keep the audience interested in the opening as it gives a clue as to what the film would be about and we wanted this revealed at the end to have an impression on the viewer. The title its self if is in front of a crying girl which also has an impression and clue about the genre as we know it is going to be a horror thriller. The title is called ‘HIDDEN’ and this was important to put at the end as it would have given the clue away too early in the opening and this would have made the audience less interested.

 Setting/Location: for the setting we wanted it to have a ‘dark feeling’ to it so we decided to film in an old house which had not been used for a while which had older looking objects to fit in with our genre/theme and story plot. This was important to keep the same throughout the film as it needed to make sense for the audience. The shot we have used is of the girl in the cage and this was to show where the scene was set and also gives clues to the genre.

Costumes and props: For our opening we used many of props to make the setting realistic and this is very significant as it had to be relatable. We had used: Army clothes for the main character, and we also used a cage for the other main character to use, dog food, most of the house items and many more. Every movie will use props to make the setting realistic and ensure that people understand what is happening throughout the film.

 Camera work and editing: We shot the opening with a hand held camera and we also used a tripod most of the time to keep the frame steady and to make sure we didn’t get camera shake. This was important as it made the opening look more professional. When shooting a real movie, a bigger camera will be used and a large tripod that can move to achieve smooth filming. We used the camera hand held at times when it was appropriate to do so; there was one shot where we did this to add to the effect and atmosphere of the opening. We edited our work on a Mac computer as this was easy to do and we had learnt how to edit on the program beforehand so we were familiar with this which made editing a lot easier.

 Title font and style: We wanted the title font and style to fit in with the style of opening. We found and downloaded a font type of the internet to do this, we needed the font to fit in with the genre and setting of the film opening. We used a different font for the opening credits to the main title of the film to emphasize on the main title. This can be seen in a lot of movie openings and is very effective. Story and how the opening sets it up: The story of the movie needed to be shown in the opening as this is what keeps the audience interested as they want to know what happens next. We had looked at many openings to see how they had made theirs interesting and this helped us figure out how we would do this. We added flash images to confuse the audience in a way so that they would want to watch the rest of it to make sense of what is going on. We have used the first shot for this as the audience won’t know what is really happening.

Genre and how the opening suggests it: The opening has a very dark atmosphere and this is how we wanted it so it fits our genre from the beginning. We had to ensure that we kept this up throughout the opening and the music really helped us to achieve this. The lighting was important to and we had to keep this in mind whilst filming as we needed to keep up the atmosphere.

How characters are introduced: We introduced the characters in different ways, as there were only two characters this made it a little easier to do. The first character is introduced in the very beginning of the opening and this was done to have some sense of what was going on in the film; however the introduction to the other character comes after the first introduction and this introduction is not supposed to make sense as we want the audience to wonder what is going on and what is going to happen in the rest of the film. I think we have done this quite well considering the two minuets we had to do so. 

Special effects: We did not really use any special effects in our opening as we think it would have been too early on in the film to do this. We did use some fade in effects ect to make the opening run smoothly and I think this also went well, I think we also used these effects appropriately. Many film openings are like ours and so i think we have done a good job by making it run smoothly. We have added titles and also music to make the opening better. I think all of this is very important to get exactly right as it all has an effect to the opening.